Montreal Jazz Festival

[Pete C]

The full indoor schedule is up as of today.

http://www.montrealjazzfest.com/fijm2004/accueil_en.asp

I'll be there July 2-4. I'm sure I'll see Chaz Longue there. Anybody else?

It's a great weekend for a Brazilian music nut. On Friday it's Joao Bosco & Gonzalo Rubalcaba (solos, duos & group) at Theatre Maisonneuve at 6, and on Sunday at Metropolis, Jorge Ben & Margareth Menezes. I'll have to miss the Orchestre National de Jazz for the latter. I saw Ben last year at the North Sea festival and it was one of the most high energy performances I've ever witnessed. Damn, though, I hate those standing room only ballrooms (I assume that's the case at Metropolis).

I'm also planning on catching the Portal/Sclavis/Humair/Texier quartet at Spectrum on Friday at 9:30.

The only thing I'm seriously considering on Saturday is the singer Lhasa, but I might wait to see what the outdoor shows that night are.

Sisco, you should consider on coming up on the 2nd. Besides the French cats at the Spectrum, Marilyn Lerner & Sonny Greenwich will be at Gesu at 6 (I'd be there if it weren't for Bosco).

I'll be driving up from Burlington on Friday with my friend David M, whom the Vermonters have met.

[Jazzzoline]

Can't go this year, I'll still be in California.

[Pete C]

Can't go this year, I'll still be in California.

I am very disappointed to hear that.

[Jazzzoline]

I am very disappointed to hear that.Hah!

[Pete C]

Truly.

[Gary Sisco]

Pete -- I'll certainly try to make it to hear the French cats, as there are several of my favorites in that group, none of whom I've had the opportunity to hear live, but, I can't commit that far ahead and it'll be a last minute thing at best, depending on the workload here and the degree of anticipated madness at the border on a holiday weekend. I take it, though, that you'll be in Burlington for a day or two before heading north? If so, we'll hook up then for sure. Maybe you and your friends can make it out to our gates this time for a small soiree, though I know that people in Burlington only very rarely visit Vermont.

[Pete C]

I take it, though, that you'll be in Burlington for a day or two before heading north?

Not this time. David is picking me up at the airport and we're driving straight up. Not only is it cheaper than flying to Montreal, I had a Jet Blue credit that was about to expire.

[willfb]

I wonder if anyone else feels that the "jazz" in Festival International de Jazz de Montreal is becoming more and more scarce.

Having said that, it will be difficult for me to resist coming up to hear Charlie Haden's series, especially the Liberation Music Orchestra.

[Gary Sisco]

Pete -- Too bad. Well, I may make it up there. We'll see. To complicate things further, I've just remembered I have the William Parker Quartet (sans poets, dancers, or singers) on my calendar, in Montreal on June 27. That depends on the workload, too, but will probably make for easier border crossing than a holiday weekend. Not having heard Hamid Drake live in two years, that's a big red star on the calendar.

[Gary Sisco]

Damn. And Greg Osby, too, before you're up there, Pete, with his new quartet. Oh, man. I know I can only pull of one day, if any. Choices, choices.

I don't know about anyone else, but there looks like a lot of jazz on that calendar to me. As usual, most of the best shows seem to be at Gesu (where they should be -- a great music room -- I've seen many excellent shows there).

[Root Doctor]

I'm on the Cape with the family until July 3rd, so I'll miss you, Pete.

[Jimmy Cantiello]

I'll be in Cancun hanging out at the beach and gorging myself..........

[Pete C]

Maybe I should have called this thread "where will you be during the Montreal jazz festival," then everybody could participate.

http://www.playbackstl.com/buttons/curmudg1.gif

[jaz4life]

i think i'll post that on the newport thread..........

[Pete C]

Sisco, look at it this way: you've seen Drake before & you'll see him again, and you're going to see the rest of those guys in NY. You've seen Osby before & you'll see him again. How many times are you going to get to see Portal, Sclavis, Texier & Humair playing together, and driving distance to boot? Perspective, baby.

[Jazzzoline]

Good news ( at least, for me it is) : I'm going to be back for the last week end.

[Gary Sisco]

Yeah, but I have to put up with dancers (and no Drake) when I see the Parker Quartet in New York. And Osby will have a new band.

And neither is on a holiday weekend when the Chief Twit of Homeland Moronity is sure to get the customs cops all wound up with a Defcon Whatever warning about nothing.

We'll see. Right now, I'm just hoping to make it to V-ville and back, and New York and back. Planning any further ahead is only inviting disaster.

[Pete C]

Yeah, but I have to put up with dancers (and no Drake) when I see the Parker Quartet in New York.

So close your f***ing eyes like I always do.

[Gary Sisco]

Pete -- Actually, I was thinking one of those black sleeping masks, to go with my normal color scheme.

[Chaz Longue]

Really looking forward to seeing y'all that week.

I'd be coming to Victo too, were it not for a little "family business".

And Pete - Metropolis is a big sort of Rock club, in a former little theatre/cabaret of some sort. It has a lOT of little balconies and so on. It's very nice - except when it's full of sweaty people, in which case it can seem a little ..."close". I saw Caetano Veloso there and enjoyed him a lot, but I got there early, was by myself, and found a single seat in a good spot in the second balcony.

See y'all in GESU !

BTW, ...Pete...Tell me about Lhasa, eh?

db

[Pete C]

BTW, ...Pete...Tell me about Lhasa, eh?

db

She's one of those young world music singer-songwriters who's getting lots of attention. Beautiful voice. She just released her 2nd album. The first, La Llorona, came out in 1997 to rave reviews, then she took time off to figure things out. Like Lila Downs she's half Mexican, half American, and lives in or near Montreal.

The Algerian chanteuse, Souad Massi, who'll be at the festival, is also getting lots of attention in the world music press.

Chaz, we'll have to arrange to hook up. I'll be getting in early Friday afternoon the 2nd, and leaving on the 5th.

How about planning a rendezvous for Saturday afternoon? David M will be driving back to Burlington after we go out for Dim Sum. Or maybe you'd like to join us for Dim Sum?

[Chaz Longue]

Pete -
After my abyssmal tardiness the last time I tried to meet you ...I'm delighted at the prospect of getting a second chance. I've noted the particulars of your perigrinations in my Palm pilot, the better to ...plan.

The logistics are this year complicated by my impending nuptials. I can't remember exactly when she and a couple of her friends are in town with me in Montreal. I just called to ask her but couldn't get through.

Let's work it out! Perhaps by email.

I'm away from Friday until the 27th. Let's pick up the conversation then...

Thanks!

db

[Pete C]

impending nuptials.

Congratulations!

[Chaz Longue]

Thank you!

[Pete C]

Chaz, how early do I need to get to Metropolis? They tell me the doors open 90 minutes in advance, but I'm not going that early. Do you think 30 minutes is safe for a seat in one of the balconies?

[Chaz Longue]

Sure - particularly if you're only one or two people, you should have time to find something good.

Looking forward to seeing you.

db

[Michel_M]

Hi,

If someone interested, I have 3 tickets for the Brad Mehldau Trio (already sold out) on Saturday July 3 at the Salle Gésu (Center, Row O, seats 9-11-13).

I sell those the price I paid : $US40 each.

Thanks

And have a good time in Montréal :)

[Pete C]

Jorge Ben Jor has canceled, so I'll be catching ONJ instead.

[JazzCat]

I'm extrememly interested in those tickets. How would we go about this?

[Michel_M]

Really sorry, I just sold the tickets a few days ago.

[JazzCat]

Don't worry about it. Maybe I'll EBay it up, if possible.

[Michel_M]

JazzCat, sent you a PM

[Pete C]

From the Gazette:

But is it jazz?
Some accuse the Montreal festival of not having enough 'pure jazz.' This year's concerts by Wynton Marsalis and genre-busting Me'Shell Ndegeocello neatly reflect the music form's ongoing identity crisis

JUAN RODRIGUEZ
Freelance


Saturday, June 26, 2004


The first two indoor concerts of the 25th Montreal International Jazz Festival, by Wynton Marsalis and Me'Shell Ndegeocello, neatly reflect the jazz world's identity crisis - a schism pitting traditionalists intent on preservation against genre-busters looking for a wider musical palette and, perhaps, audience.

The technically extraordinary neo-conservative Marsalis is noted for his advisory role on the 2000 PBS series Ken Burns' Jazz, which sparked much controversy by giving short-shrift to music that came after the genre's "golden age" (the 1920s to the '50s). The socially caustic singer Ndegeocello is a child of soul, hip-hop and, yeah, jazz - a strong female voice in an often chauvinistically male idiom - whose hybrid music is the kind Marsalis disapproves of.

No other festival offers such a copious variety of music, but whether it qualifies as "jazz" is a bone of contention. For all the big names you'd expect at a top jazz festival - Keith Jarrett, Wynton Marsalis, Dianne Reeves, Brad Mehldau, Chick Corea, Charlie Haden, John Scofield and hometown hero Oscar Peterson - there's also a smorgasbord of world music, funk and hip-hop, blues-rock and alt-rock, retro and pop (hey, Tony Bennett at the opening gala).

The jazz demimonde has always fussed and bothered, if not thrived, on controversies - swing vs. bebop, hot vs. cool, acoustic vs. electric, hip vs. square, "purity" vs. co-optation. But the current conundrum revolves around the future of jazz itself as a recognizable form. To which the Montreal festival's programmers seem to have said: "Crisis - what crisis?"

Some perennially accuse the festival of not presenting enough "pure jazz" - whatever that is, as jazz started as a blending of blues with, among other styles, polka. Bassist Haden, who plays a four-night Invitation Series, dismisses the complaints as "the elitism of jazz fans, jazz media and jazz society. They really have a very narrow view of this art form, and they want to keep it limited - to them. Like the record companies, they don't trust the average person's potential for appreciating depth."

When Jimi Hendrix was asked to pinpoint the difference between his style and the blues, he replied: "Electricity." Technology has added to, and subtracted from, jazz. When the festival premiered, the Walkman was in its first year, the Internet a glimmer in the nerd's eye, and world-beat and hip-hop sounds were the domain of aficionados. You play what you hear. The breadth and depth of listening habits are prodded by technology: the instantaneous digital reproduction and transmission of music has enormously changed the way we hear music, if only because there is so much more of it to hear.

The music boom that's gone iPod-crazy got too big for the word "jazz" - a term that always had its detractors (including Duke Ellington, who preferred calling it "Negro music"). When jazz travelled beyond the United States, it had a powerful impact as a quintessentially American art form that morphed into a universal language. Once an instantly identifiable art form, it is now more likely to be accepted as just another genre, a language that makes its presence felt as part of something else.

"It's like Frank Zappa once said, introducing his Bebop Tango, 'Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny,' " says Benoit Charest, who offers the updated big-band vavoom of his soundtrack for the hit animated feature Les Triplettes de Belleville. "The whole jazz tradition has been ruptured, for better and worse. There's a lot of fabulous New York players blending all kinds of styles - Balkan music, contemporary classical, open forms, whatever - and some of it is interesting, some of it not. But jazz is not as associated as a social movement as it was in the '40s, '50s and early '60s, when it represented a soundtrack for a generation ... a way of life. Hip-hop is doing that now."

The advent of the CD and digital remastering in the 1980s made classic recordings available to a wide public, but had an unforeseen effect on today's musicians - they found themselves in competition with dead people. Revolutionaries like Louis Armstrong, Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Miles Davis and John Coltrane were impossible acts to follow. And the romance with the golden era of jazz - or nostalgia for a time most people have no intimate experience with - makes today's music pale by comparison.

Thus dizzying internationalism has replaced the standard jazz canon as a source for the "new." Consider the unlikely trio of Eivind Aarset, the Norwegian wizard redefining the sonics of electric guitar, Tunisian singer-oudist Dhafer Youssef and Italian trumpeter Paolo Fresu.

"Perhaps in Europe we don't have the heavy burden of the jazz tradition that American musicians feel," Aarset says. "I must admit that even though I don't play traditional jazz chords, I still enjoy them immensely. But when you hear someone trying to play bebop today, you can quickly tell whether or not it works. Although I love to listen to Charlie Parker and the original bop people, today there's a 'jazz-school' atmosphere and showboating that is not interesting to me."

Electronica sounds "modern" in a world digitally defined by zeroes and ones. Many feel it lacks "human soul," others believe it embodies the aspirations and anxieties of post-20th century man. Still, the masters' jazz never sounded better than after a heavy dose of digitalia.

Improvisation is the greatest gift of jazz, when all is said and done, and presents its greatest challenges to players and listeners alike. You can't teach machines to improvise, although you can get humans to perform like bebop machines.

"There's an idea in improvised-music pedagogy that you must learn to play bebop to master your instrument," says Tom Walsh, who leads NOMA, which features double guitars, drums and basses around his skittering trombone. "I felt I'd already learned how to play trombone, so I wasn't about to spend another 10 years learning a new discipline just to make myself legit.

"Now we're at the point where either you're confining yourself with blinders - 'the jazz tradition' - or keeping your ears and brain open to remember the music that moved you when you were a child."

The idea of revolutionary movement in jazz, that it's breaking down barriers in society, has virtually disappeared. The most vital new music is often being made on the margins of categories. (Besides, there is pop to deal with: There's more musical excitement, even adventure, behind Britney Spears's Toxic than there is in many a routine jazz performance.)

Copycat traditionalism wound up as the death rattle for "jazz" as a meaningless cliche, irregardless of Marsalis's either-or choice of "setting the table or the toilet." The irony is that Marsalis, who used his pedestal as head of jazz at the Lincoln Centre to flood the market with his own records (as many as nine discs in a single year), was unceremoniously dropped by Columbia two years ago. He was picked up by the classic hard-bop label Blue Note - now re-inventing itself with the likes of Norah Jones and Medeski, Martin & Wood.

Still, our perception of music, pianist Brad Mehldau wrote, "has perhaps been blurred by all the commodities at our disposal. We've seen the advent of sampling: Take a funky beat from a '70s LP, blow some licks over it, and you've got Acid Jazz. ... The problem with all these hybrids is that they're so impermanent: Like the technology that spawns them, they're gone with the blink of an eye. We always return to the original."

And the true spirit of jazz remains, says Michel Portal, 70-year-old doyen of French jazz and contemporary classical music: "We will always respect Americans for giving us improvisation, which struck those of us raised on the classical arts as a liberating experience." Portal bears that out: the musicians who backed him on his recent album, Minneapolis We Insist!, are better known for working for Prince. C'est la vie in a hybrid world.

jrodxxx@hotmail.com

© The Gazette (Montreal) 2004

[Chaz Longue]

How great to see Mister PC again who seems well and happy and as usual knows where all the best world music and world food is.

Some highlights for me so far in Montreal:

Jean Derome/Pierre Tanguay/Normand Gilbeault at local bar - presented by L'off Festival De Jazz. Ferocious playing by a working band. Thier "10 Compositions" on the label Ambiences Magnetiques is well worth your time if you're curious about Quebec's answer to John Zorn - to use a clunky but serviceable comparison.

Orchestra National De Jazz who record for ECM. Exciting dynamic writing and giddy playing. Pete - what's the name of that tpt player who's also on Sclavis' Napoli's Walls? You know him better than I - what's the skinny on this guy? I feel bad for the other tpt player who has to stand next to him all night although he also got off a pithy solo. These guys have a blast playing live - and belong more or less on the shelf with the Vienna Art Orch, Italian Instabile et al.

Sclavis/Portal/Humair/Texier. These old friends have such rapport they can raise roof at a whisper. Wow. A rare treat for me since I've only seen Sclavis one time and never seen the other 3. The crowd was crazy over this performance, and with good reason.

Egberto Gismonti with I Musici de Montreal., a local chamber orchestra. My pulse quickened whan I saw the string players standing up. Always a good sign, imho. I liked Gismonti's guitar playing since his approach is so singular. But when he played piano time took a coffee break. Breathtaking. And they didn't even do the piece I thought for sure would be the encore - "Frevo".

And in addition to L'Off Festival De Jazz, there's another (a third) Jazz festival with all the clubs and restos along Rue St Paul involved. I had a nightcap at one place the other night and thought momentarily perhaps I'd caught Kurt Rosenwinkel out on the town. But it was just one of the local players tearing it up. Nearly every place on the street has live Jazz for free for 10 days, and based on the sets I caught I'm missing a whole lot of great music because of the overlapping dates. An embarassement of riches.


db

[Pete C]

Chaz, the trumpeter is Mederic Collignon. I think there is some discussion of him on the Euro-Mediterranean Jazz thread.