But as the new millennium rolled in, times started to change. On the jazz scene two alternatives appeared, the upstart\u00a0Off Jazz Festival<\/em>\u00a0in Y2K and, a year later the\u00a0Suoni per il Popolo<\/em>. While the former overlapped the big jazz fest (its raison d\u02bc<\/span>\u00eatre being a way for local musicians to air their grievances towards the jazz festival), the latter spread out its first edition over five weeks unto late July, a good two weeks after the main event’s final evening.<\/p>\n Nowadays, the jazz fest doggedly sticks to its name while streamlining its program to more commercial content; the Off festival, for its part, has moved to the Fall and developed its own identity as a showcase for mostly local jazz talent; the Suoni per il Popolo, finally, has held its own as the city\u02bc<\/span>s most far-reaching experimental music happening, where jazz and improvised music is only one of its facets, electronics, noise, rock and contemporary classical being others. The following is a review of just a handful of shows, starting with its most unexpected offering as festival opener.<\/p>\n The June first performance kicking off the Suoni’s 17th<\/sup>\u00a0edition was something of a paradox for a festival known to be at the cutting edge of today\u02bc<\/span>s music scene. In what could have been billed as a \u201cback to the future\u201d concert , this show was a revival of music created close to half a century ago by a now legendary collective here in Montreal called l\u02bc<\/span>Infonie.<\/em>\u00a0In its five year run (1968-1973), it created a unique body of work documented in four albums (Volumes 3,\u00a033,<\/em>\u00a0333<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a03333)<\/em>\u00a0that spanned all genres, from classical, pop, jazz, free, folk and what not). An eighteen piece ensemble of young players (none of whom were even born when the music was first created) took to the task with as much spirit as technical aplomb. Their leader,\u00a0Philipe Keyser,<\/strong>\u00a0certainly drilled his charges, and he too must be credited for actually transcribing the parts off the original records, apparently not succeeding in gaining access to the original scores stored at one of the city\u02bc<\/span>s university archives. Written and arranged by Walter Boudreau, a one-time budding jazz sax player turned composer and conductor of a leading contemporary music ensemble in town \u2013 the music obviously bears a few stylistic wrinkles now, with typecast 60s big band orchestrations and Zappa-like harmonies and free-for-all blowouts. Lest we forget, those were heady days back then when stage performances turned into musical happenings, which was precisely the case that evening where four painters and a dancer were doing their thing on stage as well.<\/p>\n Particularly heartening was the presence of eight of the nine surviving members at the show that night (Boudreau being one of them), all of whom lined up with the performers to take a well deserved bow before an enthusiastic audience, equally divided between greying (or balding) heads and a more youthful contingent of first-time listeners.<\/p>\n Anthony Braxton Sextet – June 16 – Sala Rossa<\/p><\/div>\n After that one blast from the past, the festival was true to form once again in presenting both newcomers and more established names. One of the latter,\u00a0Anthony Braxton<\/strong>, made his first appearance in Montreal in decades at the helm of his current sextet, which includes two harps (!), accordion, brass (Taylor Ho Bynum<\/strong>) and tuba (Dan Peck<\/strong>). Working off reams of graphically scored parts full of wavy lines and geometric forms, the group played almost an hour non-stop, their set lasting under the duration imposed by an hour glass at centre stage (actually 63 minutes according to Bynum). As leader, Braxton was not only playing but acting as a conductor, often cuing in segments with nods. Of course, such scores are but arbitrary and playing them again (if ever that should happen) would certainly lead to different sonic results. Interestingly, Braxton left a score page as a thank you to the owner of the bead and breakfast he was staying in, thus proving the dispensability of his writings (something he would certainly not have done if it had been a page of manuscript notated in a more traditional way). In fact, after this concert, it strikes this writer that the best way to appreciate this approach, whatever he calls it now, is not to take it too seriously, an insight gleaned from seeing the musicians dealing with it during the afternoon soundcheck, their leader first and foremost. As an opening act, local saxophonist\u00a0Fred Bazil<\/strong>\u00a0played a brief solo set showing to good advantage his warm, full tone on tenor, but not enough to offset obvious limitations in vocabulary.<\/p>\n Kaze – June 20 – Sala Rossa<\/p><\/div>\n On successive evenings, (June 20 and 21), the festival wound down on two double bills. The first offered yet another paradox, in that the first part featured musicians of two nationalities (Japanese and French) playing music devoid of any ethnic references. The group,\u00a0Kaze<\/strong>, is the pairing of pianist\u00a0Satoko Fujii<\/strong>\u00a0and her husband trumpeter\u00a0Natsuki Tamura<\/strong>\u00a0with Frenchman\u00a0Christian Pruvost<\/strong>\u00a0(also trumpet) and\u00a0Peter Orrins<\/strong>\u00a0(drums). The absence of a bass rids the group of an anchor, yet the piano assumes that role at points, setting up cues to compositional sections that surface within or at the end of free form group improvisations. Less discursive in nature, their work is more sonic, the trumpeters using various mutes and little toys, the pianist going into her piano with sticks and what not, the drummer going more for timbers than pulses or rhythms. While there is much independence in the musical activities, the group is also mindful to coalesce at times, and the compositions of the pianist serve that purpose very well.<\/p>\n The paradox of the evening really struck home in the second set.\u00a0Haram<\/strong>\u00a0is a Vancouver-based septet of six native Canadians lead by guitarist\u00a0Gordon Grdina<\/strong>\u00a0(on oud only) and a lone Iranian expatriate, all of whom play a middle-Eastern music repertoire, primarily from the latter\u02bcs own<\/span>\u00a0tradition. But the group gives the music a decidedly Western slant to it, with intense solos provided by a three-horn section of tenor sax, clarinet and trumpet, the latter played deftly by\u00a0J,P. Carter,<\/strong>\u00a0who took the standout solo of the set. Yet, for all of the traditional flavours, the high energy level made the experience numbing after awhile. Particularly overbearing was the drummer\u00a0Kenton Loewen<\/strong>\u00a0who forced everyone to play louder and higher most of the times. This was especially problematic for clarinetist\u00a0Fran\u00e7ois Houle<\/strong>, who had little opportunity to show his consummate artistry and even backed off from his first solo spot of the evening, unable to cut through the din. On another occasion, he was forced to wail in the upper end of his horn in order to be heard (and now we know why Jimmy Giuffre put together his trio without drums…)<\/p>\n The last performance seen, on June 21, was an interesting pairing of vastly different approaches to free improvising. The first half, which could be viewed as a more ‘classic’ take, was billed as a quartet with piano, trumpet, drums and bass, but with a no show from the latter, it was reduced to a trio. The pianist\u00a0Karoline Leblanc<\/strong>\u00a0and her partner,\u00a0Paulo J. Ferreira Lopes<\/strong>\u00a0(drums) are understandably a closely knit unit. In recent years, they have been going to the drummer’s native Portugal to participate in a regional all-improv music meeting in the countryside, which lead them to record a self-produced album over there last year with two native musicians, trumpeter\u00a0Luis Vincente,\u00a0<\/strong>on board for this gig. In true free jazz tradition their set was based on energy playing, the horn spewing sounds in an almost machine-gun like way, the pianist responding with clusters all over the keyboard, the drummer stoking the fires with his own salvos. Along the way, there were some moments of respite but they were intermissions before the next take off. Though in the same spirit as their full quartet recording, the lack of one player may have lead the musicians to lay it on a little thicker as a trio, but one thing is for sure: no other musical genre is more adaptive to unforeseen circumstances than improvised music is. (In a more conventional setting, such as playing tunes or set arrangements, the absence of a bass player can throw a performance off completely, not so in improvised music, at least in the right hands, like those that night.)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/myscena.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/Braxton.jpg\")
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