Montreal Jazz Festival 2011: Day Two

The Montreal Jazz Festival continues through July 4; before we headed out to Halifax, day two proved to be the high point. Once again, there was an early show at the beer tent on St.-Catherine just off Bleury. This time it was Le Dixieband, pretty much the same group as the previous day. As with that incarnation (with a different clarinetist and drummer), they push the envelope with dixieland, incorporating elements of early swing and ragtime and this time, funk. Bandleader/trombonist Richard Turcotte bantered with the crowd between songs, while clarinetist Bruno Lamarche fired off one supersonic, klezmer-tinged arpeggio after another, trumpeter Aron Doyle supplying firepower over the fluid groove of Luc Bouchard on banjo, Jeff Simons on drums and Jean Sabourin on sousaphone. The previous afternoon’s show was darker; this was the fun set, amping up Cole Porter and Louis Armstrong, closing by giving When the Saints Go Marching In a hip-tugging, funky bounce. Playing an early show is invariably a tough gig, but these guys made it look easy: it was a welcome jolt of energy to kick off the day.

French quartet Les Doigts de L’homme’s name is a pun. Meaning “the fingers of man,” it’s a play on “les droits de l’homme,” meaning “human rights,” the foundation of French democracy. Sunday night they celebrated their right to party: the crowd, extending at least two city blocks from the stage, literally exploded after they’d wound up their last song: the reaction was visceral. And they knew a lot of the songs, and clapped along. Maybe it’s the connection between France and Montreal, or maybe it’s just that Les Doigs de L’homme had just played their doigts off. Drawling on their new album 1910, which celebrates the Django Reinhardt centenary, they put an exhilarating new spin on an old sound. They’re much more than a Django cover band: Les Doigs de L’homme are taking gypsy jazz to new places. Lead guitarists Olivier Kikteff and Benoit Convert stretched out the songs for minutes on end with a barrage of long, crescendoing solos that never let up. Kikteff is the harder hitter of the two, and a bit of a ham; Convert’s equally blinding speed is disguised by the seemingly effortless fluidity of his attack. Behind them, rhythm guitarist Yannick Alcocer and bassist Tanguy Blum locked into a mesh of spiky textures punctuated by the occasional terse, biting bass solo.

One of their early numbers saw the band creating the echo effect popularized by U2 guitarist the Edge, but in real time. Another worked a hypnotic, circular riff for a watery, Pat Metheny-ish vibe before going off into gypsyland. Kikteff reminded the crowd that St. James Infirmary Blues is about a guy watching his wife die in the hospital, and gave it an austerely plaintive edge with an expansive solo against a flurry of tremolo-picking from the rest of the band. They swung through a diversion into the Django songbook with a surprisingly effective, funky rhythm, made a brief attempt to get the crowd to go with some polyrhythms (“The Swiss are great at this,” Kikteff deadpanned) and wound up their hour onstage with a blistering, Balkan-inflected number where Kikteff first quoted from Hot Butter’s old 1970s instrumental-cheese hit Popcorn (what is it about the French and Popcorn, anyway?), finally firing off a lickety-split, somewhat tongue-in-cheek solo using high harmonics way up his high E string. It was the highlight of the festival for us, especially since we missed their New York show at le Poisson Rouge earlier in the week.

Montreal Jazz Festival 2011, Day One

The world’s most unpretentious jazz festival got off to an auspicious start yesterday. As with jazz festivals around the globe, the Montreal Jazz Festival encompasses many other styles of music as well. The local media raved about flamenco guitarist Paco de Lucia’s performance last night, while word on the street was that tickets for the singer from that famous 70s metal band, and that has-been 80s funk guy, were hot. But as usual, the real action was in the smaller rooms. New York was well-represented: David Binney, pianist Dan Tepfer playing a duo with Lee Konitz, and Marc Ribot’s Ceramic Dog numbered among the literally hundreds of acts on the festival bill, which continues through July 4. And the habitants‘ groups proved just as interesting as the innumerable acts from out of town.

Our Saturday got off to an early start at one of the many makeshift beer tents with a smoking, genre-busting set by Montreal sextet Hot Pepper Dixieland (a spinoff of Le Dixieband, with a different drummer and clarinetist). Playing a mix of the well-known and the lesser-known, not just blissed-out dancefloor shuffles (although they did some of those too), they mixed in a hot 20s early swing vibe along with elements of ragtime. And they started out as brooding and minor-key as this kind of stuff gets before picking up the pace with a spiky, vividly rustic St. James Infirmary, a balmy My Blue Heaven and finally a surprisingly bracing, ominously minor-key tinged When the Saints Go Marching In.

Later in the afternoon, there was a “battle of the bands” on the esplanade, pairing off two marching units: Swing Tonique Jazz Band on the west side versus Streetnix on the east. Ostensibly a contest to see who could drown out the other, each entertained a separate crowd: volume-wise, the more New Orleans-flavored Swing Tonique had the upper hand versus Streetnix, who mined a more European vibe (including a bouncy, amped-up version of La Vie en Rose). Eventually, Streetnix launched into Caravan and resolutely stomped their way up to the middle of the plaza where Swing Tonique joined them, and then graciously gave their quieter compatriots a chance to cut loose. The entire crew closed with an energetic blues, with solos all around: by then, the crowd had completely encircled them, pretty much everyone sticking around despite the intermittent torrents of rain that would continue into the night.

Our original game plan was to catch jazz pianist John Roney next, but that was derailed by a pitcher of beer and some enormous mounds of fries over on Rue St.-Denis. Having watched Lorraine Muller a.k.a. the Fabulous Lolo – former frontwoman of popular Canadian ska bands the Kingpins and Lo & the Magnetics – play a tantalizing soundcheck earlier in the day, it was great to catch a full set of her band’s totally retro 60s ska and rocksteady. Two of our crew immediately suffered intense drummer envy: this guy had the one-drop down cold, and had a sneaky, rattling fill ready for wherever it was least expected. For that matter, the whole rhythm section, including bass, guitar, organ and piano, was pretty mighty, a solid launching pad for the band’s killer three-piece horn section, which Lolo joined a few times, playing baritone sax. They reinvented Hawaii 5-0 as a syncopated noir rocksteady theme and later on took a stab at the Steven Stills moldie oldie Love the One You’re With (did Ken Boothe or somebody from that era cover it, maybe?). Montreal reggae crooner Danny Rebel, a big hit with the crowd, duetted with Lolo on a straight-up ska tune and a balmy rocksteady ballad lowlit by the guitarist’s reverb-drenched twang. The rest of the set switched cleverly back and forth between bouncy and slinky. A band this good deserves a global following.

Last stop of the night was the Balmoral, a shi-shi bar around the corner where bassist Jean-Felix Mailloux was playing an intriguing set of original compositions in a duo with Guillaume Bourque on clarinet and bass clarinet. Mailloux’ background in gypsy jazz was obvious, but his influences extend to both klezmer and third stream sounds. One of the bass/bass clarinet numbers was a clinic in the kind of interesting things that can be done with a minor mode and a simple three-note descending progression; another paced along with moody tango ambience; another plaintively alluded to Erik Satie. Mailloux alternated between melody, pulse and pure rhythm, tapping out the beat on the body of the bass as Bourque circled with an intensity that ranged from murky to acerbic.

And despite the rain, the festival atmosphere was shockingly convivial (at least from a New Yorker’s perspective). A high school girl working security sheepishly asked one of us to open up a purse (cans, bottles and dogs are verboten) instead of giving us New York Central Park rent-a-pig attitude; beer vendors wandered throughout the crowd, as if at a hockey game. Although there was a tourist element, the occasional gaggle of fratboys or douchettes in tiaras and heels lingering on the fringes, this was overwhelmingly a laid-back, polyglot local crowd, not a lot of English being spoken other than the occasional song lyric. It’s hard to imagine a better way to kick off a vacation than this.