Six Favorites From Montreal Jazz Festival 2013

With 108 cultural festivals each year, Montreal is widely considered the “Cultural Capital of Canada,” as well as the “City of Festivals.” Locals like to joke that their city has two seasons: winter and festivals, but the truth is, Montreal hosts festivals all year long – even in the dark of winter.

For those more inclined to visit during clement weather, Montreal’s Jazz Festival is ranked by the Guinness World Records as the world’s largest jazz festival.

For ten days and nights, more than 2 million fans of all types of jazz-related music – and at Montreal Jazz Festival, the term “jazz” is employed loosely to include soul, R&B, blues, funk, folk, rock, hip-hop, reggae, ska, world music, electronica, ragtime, and swing, among other genres – convene in the heart of downtown Montreal to listen to more 3,000 entertainers perform 300 concerts on 8 outdoor stages and 13 concert venues.

This summer’s 34th annual edition of the beloved festival was dedicated to American pianist and composer Dave Brubeck whose final Montreal Jazz Festival concert preceded his death by just six months.

During the ten-day festival, the six square blocks of Montreal Jazz Festival become the heart of what locals like to think of as “Planet Jazz.”

Loosely defined (and subject to multiple interpretations), Planet Jazz is that place where the pulse of the planet’s jazz beat enters your body and soul.

With the six-block Quartier des Spectacles closed to all vehicular traffic, more than 100,000 music fans merge on the Place des Festivals in downtown Montreal to create an idyllic oasis where music reigns supreme.

The diversity of music at Montreal Jazz Festival reflects the broad spectrum of humanity that embraces the citywide jazz groove.  With more than 300 free outdoor concerts and a surfeit of performances that continue long after midnight, the city of Montreal during Jazz Fest becomes an extended jazz riff marked by camaraderie and a palpable joie de vivre.

Sponsored by TD and Rio Tinto Alcan, Montreal Jazz Festival has been a carbon-neutral event since 2008 and awarded with a “Sustainable Tourism” trophy.  Each year, more than 1,500 local students earn their first work experience at Montreal Jazz Festival, meeting visitors from all around the globe. The festival also offers seasonal fare from more than 50 gourmet restaurants and bars.

As you meander through Montreal Jazz Festival, joined by thousands of other jazz aficionados, you start to imagine a world where music is the answer to the world’s woes. That’s the heart of Planet Jazz, the pulse of Montreal Jazz Festival.

Bettye LaVette: How else do you read the arc of Bettye LaVette‘s long and tortuous career but as a testament to fortitude and resilience? Good things come to those who keep on – and LaVette has been keepin’ on for 50 years.

As LaVette declaimed from the stage of the packed house at Metropolis in Montreal, “The 9-year ‘Who the hell is she?’ tour is actually the 50th anniversary tour” – and what a celebration it’s been, now that the public has finally caught up with the woman whose voice is nothing less than the history of R&B music.

LaVette could’ve been a thespian – or rather, she is a thespian, internalizing the lyrics and adopting the persona behind every song she claims. In LaVette’s own words, “If I like it, I sing it; the person who sang the song first doesn’t intimidate me.”

Slinky and sexy, with a pantherine grace, LaVette has the legs and angularity of a Bob Fosse dancer, but it’s the voice you notice first: the power commingling with vulnerability, the raw emotion alongside the strength and pride.

LaVette has a deep familiarity with the blues in the songs of the British invasion, as evinced in her CD “Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook.”  Her Jazz Festival set included her revelatory interpretation of The Who’s classic “Love Reign O’er Me,” which proved as spellbinding in Montreal as when she sang it at the Kennedy Center Honors.

In introducing “I’m Tired,” a track from her new CD “Thankful N’Thoughtful,” LaVette shook her head and said, “I can’t even begin to tell you…” – but this woman is the farthest thing from “tired.” If this is “tired,” bottle it, please, so we can all be this energized onstage.

Her set included a ferocious rendition of “Joy,” as well as “Close as I’ll Get to Heaven” from her CD “A Woman Like Me” (which is also the title of her recent riveting autobiography). She ripped into “Crazy” from “Thankful N’Thoughtful” and performed a stirring interpretation of Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold.”

The confessional mode of LaVette’s onstage patter makes an audience feel invited into LaVette’s kitchen, where, it just so happens there’s a living legend about to unleash a song both personal and passionate.

As an encore, demanded by the stomping and cheering crowd, LaVette bestowed her fans with an a cappella version of “I Do Not Want What I Have Not Got.” A fitting benediction for a woman whose life is a testament to the fact that some things, like wine, improve with age – and a reminder that nothing replaces life experience.

Charles Walker and The Dynamites: The dynamic personality at the front of Nashville’s The Dynamites is a man named Charles Walker whose seductive charisma and electrifying stage presence evoke the glory years of R&B and remind audiences what it was like to be in the clutches of male vocalists such as Al Green, Harold Melvin, Donny Hathaway, Teddy Pendergrass, and yes, Marvin Gaye.

Originally a member of Little Charles and the Sidewinders from the 1960s, Walker works the mike with his voice (and his hips), but what was particularly remarkable at Jazz Fest was witnessing the enthusiasm and joy that Walker incited within a crowd comprised of twenty-somethings.  These are kids who weren’t even a twinkle in their parents’ eyes when Walker was first recording and they were having it all, every bit of Walker’s soulful performance.

The Dynamites brand-new single “Still Can’t Get You Out of My Heart” from their third album “Love Is Only Everything” recalls the work of such seminal groups as The Trammps, Tower of Power, and The Blue Notes. Walker also sings a poignant duet “Yours and Mine” with fellow soul survivor Bettye LaVette, which recalls their days singing at Small’s Paradise in New York’s Harlem.

But no one in this bunch is looking back with regret. “So throw away that rearview mirror,” sings Walker. “It’s no more use to me.” As redolent as a summer romance, Charles Walker and The Dynamites are a  reminder that soul music is timeless.

The Cat Empire: A last-minute surprise concert by one of Australia’s most acclaimed and popular bands, The Cat Empire, packed the Place des Festivals with a wildly enthusiastic crowd of howling feline fanatics.

Fronted by trumpeter Harry James Angus and percussionist Felix Riebl, both of whom perform vocals, The Cat Empire followed their two sold-out shows at Metropolis with two additional outdoor concerts on the Place des Festivals

The boundless energy of Riebl and Angus ignited the crowd who responded in kind by jumping and bouncing, hands in the air, and singing along to the songs from the band’s five studio albums.

During the course of their 12-year career, The Cat Empire has traveled the globe with their amalgam of percussion, horns, string, and turntables. The Cat Empire‘s last Festival appearance was seven years ago in 2006 and the audience greeted their return with rapture.

“It’s good to have you here,” go the lyrics from the new single “Steal the Light” and as Riebl sang the words, the audience sang in heartfelt response.

As Angus has stated about “Steal The Light,” The Cat Empire‘s latest album, “This record is a return to our original aesthetic: that the music is for dancing and feeling good and that the beat of the record belongs to all nations. It should make people smile, make people dance. That’s all we want.”

Ask and you shall receive. What The Cat Empire wanted was exactly what they received at Montreal Jazz Festival: a jubilant crowd of happy, dancing people.  It doesn’t get better.

Madeleine Peyroux: “I like sad songs, because they make me happy,” declared Madeleine Peyroux after offering a sold-out crowd her rendition of “I Hear Music.”

According to Peyroux, the popular Burton Lane and Frank Loesser chestnut from 1940 was “as cheerful as you’re going to get from me tonight,” which suited most of the audience just fine.

Performing with an eight-person orchestra, Peyroux’s concert at Théâtre Maisonneuve was an homage to Ray Charles’ 1962 “Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music” and a celebration of Peyroux’s latest release “The Blue Room.”

Peyroux’s versions of “Bye Bye Love” and “I Can’t Stop Lovin’ You” breathed new pathos into the popular tunes, while her rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Bird on a Wire” was limned with a poignant yearning.

Peyroux’s penchant for “sad songs” and her iconic voice (a dollop of Billie Holiday, with a splash of Patsy Cline) make her a natural for the compositions of Randy Newman, Serge Gainsbourg, and Bob Dylan. She imbued Warren Zevon’s “Desperadoes Under the Eaves” with an end-of-the-continent desperation.

One of Peyroux’s most popular songs is “Dance Me to the End of Love,” which she offered to the audience with a kind of Piaf insouciance.

Taking a request from an audience member for her encore, Peyroux consented to sing “La Vie En Rose” – and as she did so, a hush fell over a newly-smitten audience.

Such are the magical moments of Montreal Jazz Festival.

Nikki Yanofsky: Completely sold out weeks in advance, Nicole “Nikki” Yanofsky‘s three-night stint at Thèâtre du Nouveau Monde was the hot ticket of the festival.

Discovered at the festival at age 12 in 2006, Yanofsky is the darling of Montreal Jazz Festival: an accomplished vocalist whose interpretive skills belie her age (not yet twenty).

Her 2007 recording of the Ella Fitzgerald classic “Airmail Special” was produced by Tommy LiPuma, while her new album “Little Secret” is produced by Quincy Jones.

Yanofsky has performed at some of the jazz world’s most legendary venues, including the Olympia in Paris and the Blue Note in New York.

The “Little Secret” tour continues throughout 2013.  Miss her at your peril – but just remember that this is the young woman who sang “On A Clear Day You Can See Forever” at a concert honoring…Barbra Streisand.

Kat Edmonson: A voice to listen for, Kat Edmonson has a distinctive lilt and a lovely light jazz sound. Her stage persona is as fresh as a daisy, not unlike a quirky Daisy Buchanan who escaped East Egg to sing songs with Western cowboys.

There’s some Stacey Kent in Edmonson’s voice, alongside the plaintive clarity of Patsy Cline – and her songwriting chops about modern love and quotidian pleasures evoke the songs of Tracey Thorn.

According to Edmonson, for inspiration she drew upon the spaghetti western soundtracks of Ennio Morricone – and the results are reminiscent of a lone singer on the prairie with a night sky full of stars.

 

Additional Information:  Click here for MRNY slideshow of Montreal Jazz Festival 2013.