Josef Woodard

Delirium on the Gastown Stage, Vancouver, 2009.

JAZZ FESTS IN CANADA: What with dour news filtering through the U.S. jazz biz, in the wake of New York City’s JVC Jazz Festival fizzling out on short notice this summer, our jazz sensors go elsewhere. We know that this great music will out, and find its way, on other shores and latitudes if necessary. One magnetically-charged direction is directly northward, where the venerable and apparently hardy Canadian jazz festival circuit continues to be a model of health and aesthetic welfare.

Troubles brew below the borderline, but the prominent Montreal Jazz Festival, arguably the finest all-purpose and logistically-clean—machined jazz festival in the world, strode proudly into its 30th anniversary. For almost two weeks, the festival buzzed with a dense program of indoor shows and breezier fare on its free outdoor stages, in an expanded, pedestrian-only fest zone. The Place des Festivals and a new building, equipped with offices upstairs and a sleek new jazz club, L’Astral downstairs.

Meanwhile, way out west (to paraphrase Sonny Rollins), the Vancouver Jazz Festival, looking forward to its 25th anniversary next year, has been carrying forth with less resources and less ideal proximity to N.Y.C. and Europe, but a perhaps fiercer dedication to conveying the sweep, power, and aesthetic electricity of the multi-headed jazz beast. A few days recently spent in the midst of the 2009 festival proved to be an ear-opening experience in a different way than the Montreal model, mainly thanks to Vancouver’s insistence on representing the vital, if commercially more muted avant-garde contingent in this music.

Two of the stronger American (excuse us, U.S.-based) acts presently alighting the scene could be heard on successive weekday nights. Tipping a hat to another important jazz festival, the festival featured the luminous and hot band known as the Monterey Quartet, formed in honor of the Monterey Jazz Festival’s 50th anniversary in 2008, in the fine theater known as The Centre. All the players—bassist Dave Holland, tenor saxist Chris Potter, drummer Eric Harland, and pianist — are individually and collectively stellar, and one hopes they will carry on as a unit. It’s a collective with a potent, inventive and unique sound, also heard on a Concord Records album, and one wants to know them better.

On the next night in the lavish Orpheum Theatre, the evening belonged to promethean Sonny Rollins himself, who recently dazzled a Campbell Hall audience in Santa Barbara. The 78-year-old icon came out with poised bravura and a sense of adventure, breathing new and lived-in life into “Body and Soul.”

No doubt, to a certain type of left-leaning ears (present company included), the star of the show was the project Monk’s Casino, the most imaginative and suitably obsessive tribute to Thelonious Monk in years—or ever? Leave it to intellectually enterprising German pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach, who recorded all known Monk tunes, in short, re-imagined arrangements on a 2005 three-disc set for the Intakt label. And the live band, with trumpeter Axel Dörner, bass clarinetist Rudi Mahall, bassist Jan Roder and drummer Uli Jennessen, is among the most livewire experiences you’ll catch on the current scene, wending its way around a sonic casino of endless reshuffled Monk business.

At the multi-purpose venue known as the Roundhouse, Monk’s Casino lived up to its witty name, with adventuresome antics and the rubbery sly humor known to grace European avant-jazz projects more than the more furrow-browed free players on this side of the drink.

From that project, at the renovated and vibe-alicious late night hang the Ironworks, Dörner—one of jazz’ most compelling and undersung trumpeters--and Mahall joined Vancouver-based bassist Torsten Müller and drummer Dylan van der Schiff, in a model set of free improvisation. Delirium, a fascinating inside-outside band out of Finland and Denmark, proved its visceral powers by winning over both the general public crowd at the free outdoor, waterfront “Gastown” stage by day, and stretching out for the diehards at the Ironworks by late night.

A visit to Vancouver should include at least one stop in the vastly retooled and tourist-friendly former industrial spot Granville Island, now a wonderland of colorful corrugated metal buildings and a rambling, aromatic marketplace. On the way there, you can stop by the famous/infamous Elbow Room for some savory breakfast grub, and volleys of comic abuse. The latter is better appreciated after coffee (“get your ass up and get it yourself, honey,” says the mouthy proprietor, with a bark and a grin). The jazz festival plants its feet on Granville Island, too, including afternoon concerts in Performance Works, including Vancouver’s own provocative and stylistically elastic band Ugly Beauties and an impressive free-play encounter with Müller, Jakob Riis and Kjell Nordeson.

This is not to say that Vancouver embraces the “out” at the expense of more mainstream hot ticket acts, which this year included David Sanborn, Derek Trucks, Pink Martini, Kurt Elling and Al Dimeola World Sinfonia 2009. But some of its real jewels lurk and shimmer in the margins. In any case, a summer trip up to Vancouver is always a recommended jaunt for jazz lovers.

OF MONTREAL: This year, Montreal’s star factor included acts which had played earlier in Vancouver, including the Monterey Quartet and “Kind of Blue @ 50,” from Jimmy Cobb’s So What Band. History-minding was, in fact, a running theme in Montreal, what with Kind of Blue’s golden anniversary band (pretty generic stuff, actually) and Dave Brubeck’s 50th birthday reprise of his classic album Time Out.

Miles Davis was paid homage in other ways, too. The Miles from India band is an intriguing large, multi-cultural group of American (with Nicholas Payton as a resonant, reasonable trumpet surrogate) and Indian musicians (including Miles alumnus Badal Roy and present Indo-jazz hero Rudresh Mahanthapa), with a special nod to Miles’ On the Corner-era sound. A show from Kenny Garrett, another Miles alum, purported to pay tribute to “MD,” but the set was too heavy on bland funk- vamps to suit the tributee. More enticing and fine alto sax madness and grace came through the horn of Lee Konitz, a seasoned legend deserving wider recognition, at the Gesu—Centre de creativite (site of many of the festival’s most artful sounds each year).

Joshua Redman was a multi-concert “invitational” artist, whose four-night run capped off with the rousing and chordless double trio show (Brian Blade and Gregory Hutchinson on drums, Reuben Rogers and Larry Grenadier on bass). Stevie Wonder played a free outdoor show, for an estimated 150,000 tightly-packed people. In another pop-colored quarter, a festival standout was rock-jazz hero Jeff Beck, who, at 64, packs more wit, glissy goosy nuance and sheer musicality—by whatever genre name—than many young firebrands put together. Beck packed two shows in the large Salle Willifred Peltier, and the mutant crowd consisted of jazzbos, ‘60s revisiters, and just plain, idiom-hopping music-lovers.

All these categories, and more, can find much to crow about in Montreal come early summer. The city is still a center of the jazz universe for several days per annum. Moreover, the Canadian conception of the jazz festival—particularly its models on the west and east coast—is grounded in goodness (and the help of corporate and government support, it should be noted). Festivals on this side of the border ought to steal an organizational riff or two from the Great White North.

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