It's that time of year again, the Montreal Jazz Festival is in full swing.
I live three blocks away from the festival site but usually only wander over a couple of times during the 11 days of the festival. Many years I didn't even go to it at all (ok, for many of those years I was not around Montreal, maybe just popping in for a weekend respite from Borden or Ceremonial Guard). The last couple of years I have taken to going on my birthday. Most years it falls within the festivasl period.
The first paid concert I went to was three years ago when Wynton Marsellas was playing Place des Arts with his group on my birthday. Last year I didn't get any tickets for my birthday, just spent the day wandering around the site. They added an extra show for Holly Cole near the end of the festival so I scooped one of those up.
Well this year I went ape shit on the tickets. My birthday fell the day before the official opening of the festival but they had a special pre-festival concert by Diana Krall on the 29th which I went to. Last night I had a double bill, John Pizzarelli at Theatre Maisonneuve at 6 then kd lang at Salle Wilfred Pelletier at 8:30. They are right next to each other but I still ran out on John Pizzarelli while he was doing his final number. He was really smoking last night doing bossa nova numbers off his most recent album. He had a bunch of Brazilians with him including Daniel Jobim, the granson of the creator of most of the bossa nova catalog, Antonio Carlos Jobim. Will have to check with my friends to find out how many numbers I missed with encores.
Got into my seat in Salle Wilfred Pelletier at 8:30 on the dot just to have an opening act come on! Why don't they let you know there is going to be a warm up act? Anyway, he wasn't bad. Sort of a world music thing. Xavier Rudd, from Australia, was playing slide guitars and a variety of indiginous instruments including three didgeridoos. It was actually pretty cool.
kd lang came on along with her group (including David Piltch on bass, he was Holly Cole's bassist for her first 5 or 6 albums) and a string section from the MSO. It was a nicely balanced concert including old stuff (Miss Chatelaine, Constant Cravings), four songs off her new album that features Canadian songwriters (songs by Neil Young, Jane Siberry (2 songs) and Leonard Cohen), Crying, a song she had done with Tony Bennett and a few jazz tinged songs. She also bantered a lot with the audience. Despite the fact that Salle Wilfred Pelletier has the worse acoustics and sound system in the world it was a good concert overall.
This marathon of paid indoor concerts ends on Saturday. I have tickets for the grand finale concert featuring the Oliver Jones Trio and the Oscar Peterson Trio. Should be something.