Jazz Festival - Montreal

Last night Clem, Pascal & I went down to the Festival International du Jazz de Montréal. We took in a few free outdoor shows. The organizers shut down four huge streets in the downtown core and make it into a giant perdestrian outdoor Jazz fest... along with many indoor paid concerts. It's always great fun and a good atmosphere and last night didn't disappoint.

We started off with supper at Basha... Arab fare.. very nice actually. Even a gang of young Arab guys next to us gave it all some flavor and atmosphere. Cool language they have actually.

Now, I'm hardly a Jazz officianado of any sorts but I like to listen to Jazz on Couleur Jazz FM and own a few Jazz CD's and probably get more satisfaction from them than most other types of music. I must admit though I really like a broad spectrum of musical styles..

Anyways, we started off at the Complex Desjardin exit to the festivities and caught this three woman act called The Moonlight Girls who kinda reminded me of the Pointer Sisters except they really sang songs from the 30s and 40s so more like The Andrew Sisters. They were good but the other acts we caught were much better.

The initial thrust into the Festival for 2005



Some crowds had started to gather.



We decided to go up onto Place Des Arts terrace to see if we could get a better view. I've been in the centre of the crowd before and it's scary. It can reach 70,000 people when the big show in the middle of the festival is on and once you are in you can't get out... but this was a smaller show.



The fountain was cooling people off as always... looks pretty at dusk..



The show was heating up and people were getting into the groove;





We weren't overly impressed so we decided to walk to the back side of the Festival to see the Blues stage then the Hip Hop stage, passing through all the food and drink areas on the terrace;



On the Blues stage was an incredible guitarist, David Gogo... this guy made his guitar sing like crazy. I've seen some amazing acts here on this stage over the years and this one one of the best. The crowd was going nuts. We were all glued to the stage.



At 10pm we headed over to the Hip Hop stage to catch a techno band. Humm.. jazz and techno fused.. interesting. Montreal's Jazz fest is a mix of everything. The performers were a three man band from Brooklyn New York called Tortured Soul. The beat was rhythmic and repetitious. The drummer amazing... he was so into his music... his head throbbing back and forth. The sound was mesmerizing and the crowd just grew with the beat. Everyone was dancing at the end.









They wrapped up around 11:30 after two encores and a sales pitch to buy their CD's and T-s. We headed back to the main stage on Ste-Catherine Street where we came out. The Moonlight Girls were performing still but the crowd was larger and more sensual by now. Jazz just goes with nightime.









Anyways.. after a beer or two we split up and I headed home.. had to be up around 6am and it was already 00:30.. the crowds were still pretty thick and music was playing everywhere. I'll be back later in the week to catch some more.