Hey, the Jazz Festival has returned to Montreal! The Festival is one of the best things about summer here - two weeks of great, mostly free music. There’s a lot to say about the Festival, but for now I’ll just stick to a few things.
Each year, the Festival has a few big free shows, that typically draw tens of thousands of people down to Place des Arts. Sometimes they’re incredible, like Cirque du Soleil. Sometimes, like last night, it’s the Neville Brothers. I usually try to go to the big concerts, even when I’m not crazy about the artists, just because of the scope of the events.
So I tried, valiantly, to appreciate Aaron Neville’s crooning, but it just wasn’t happening (even after an afternoon of drinking and baseball). Luckily for us, there was a great band from France - Smooth playing at another stage. Billed as “an electro-jazz sung in English but grooving in the universal language of hip”, these guys were really good. Their sound was built up from their really funky rhythm section of a drummer and bass player, with a singer/guitarist/keyboardist on top.
That show was part of the Groove series at the Festival, which always has the best party music each year, and looks to be really solid again this year. Tonight, I’m going to try to see Gomez, but might not, because who starts a rock show at 6pm?
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