Jazz and Montreal – Celebrating a Major Milestone
If Paris is “the city of lights”, then without question Montreal is the city of festivals. And the one festival that best demonstrates this has to be Montreal’s world renowned jazz festival, the “Festival International de Jazz de Montreal”. Of course, this year’s event was certainly bigger than previous ones as the festival was celebrating its 30th anniversary of bringing this musical genre out onto the streets of Montreal and into the various clubs and theatres throughout the city. But the festival’s organizers were not the only ones celebrating a major milestone with this year’s edition of the jazz festival. In fact, this year’s festival also marked my 20th consecutive year of attending this amazing celebration of the world of jazz. And just as the jazz festival itself has evolved over the years, so too has my own personal experiences being an attendee of this event.
Walking around this year’s festival grounds, I couldn’t help but reminisce about how I first started attending this event as a place to hang-out with my high school friends, listening to various jazz acts and enjoying that sense of freedom that comes with school coming to an end and the beginning of summer vacation. Now, twenty years later, I still wander the grounds and savour the music being performed on the numerous stages that populate the area, except now it’s my beautiful wife and children who I share these moments with.
The Montreal Jazz Festival has naturally grown beyond being just a celebration for jazz aficionados through its offerings of paid, indoor concerts and free, outdoor ones. Over the past twenty years, I’ve watched it grow into a meeting ground for all music lovers, a place where there are events for families and children, for the young and the old, basically for people from all walks of life. Indeed, when one hangs out at the festival grounds, you can’t help but soak up the atmosphere of those gathered as much as the music wafting from the concert stages above. And while the crowds in attendance can easily swell into the tens of thousands (and in the case of their major concerts, aptly called the “Grand Evenements”, this swells up to 100 000-150 000 attendees), there’s always that sense of intimacy that one associates with listening to jazz, if not the consistent presence of generous souls offering their spot to my children so they might have a better view of the stage.
Of course, it’s not hard to get into the festive mood with the site’s grounds adorned in bright colours and various other decorations. As this year’s edition marks the festival’s 30th anniversary, the organizers obviously wanted all visitors to know that this year was a very special one for the festival and they did such in a very imaginative way. Using the windows of one of the buildings that border the site, organizers illuminated images of some of the most renowned jazz musicians who have performed at Montreal’s jazz festival. It was an impressive sight to see this visual montage to the festival’s 30 year history brightly displayed on this six-story building.
For my kids, though, one show we always make a point of seeing is one done especially for children called “La Petite Ecole de Jazz de Montreal” (translation – “The Little School of Jazz of Montreal”) . In this show, the kids are made a part of a ’school’ where the show’s performers are learning about jazz music and how any song can be turned into a jazz piece. At the end of the show, the kids get a diploma to show that they’ve learned about how to make jazz music.
But it’s not just the variety of musical acts that are served for the listening pleasures of those present that has caused the Montreal Jazz Festival to become such a popular event with everyone, including my own children. The success is derived from the other activities and events they present to ensure a visit to this festival is a memorable one. One night at this year’s jazz festival, my kids were enthralled by a spectacle put on by a troupe of fire-breathers, who at one point lit up the night sky as flames blew from their mouths in synchronicity.
On another visit during the daytime, my kids were treated with getting their faces painted, a big highlight for them from this year’s event as afterwards we were often stopped by other festival goers asking if they could take their picture, if not wanting to gaze at the sight of my girls a little longer. At one point my daughter turned to me and said “Hey, papa! Look! We’re popular!”.
Later on that same day, my kids not only got to watch the daily Mardi Gras-inspired parade down the festival’s main street, but several of the performers encouraged them to interact with them and become a part of it, with one musician-clown even offering my kids to help her play some music for the parade’s audience. As you can see, the festival’s organizers make sure that their event not only satisfies those eager to whet their appetite with the best the world of jazz has to offer, but also those they bring along for that experience.
It is often said that music has no boundaries, that it crosses the cultural and social divides we place within our collective societies. Standing among the throngs listening to the music being played on stage at this festival, one cannot help but appreciate the tangible truth to this statement, of how music more than anything else in this world has this ability to tear down those barriers and leaving in its place a single mass of humanity.
It’s been interesting as well to see how this event has captured the passage of time, of the changes we all encounter through the simple act of living our lives. Standing next to a poster reprint for the first edition of the jazz festival I went to, I couldn’t help but ponder the changes in my life that accompanied me each year I attended this festival. It’s not often that we have some event, some tangible exercise that begins in our youth and carries on into becoming something we share with our own children. It certainly stirs some interesting thoughts about how we view our lives and what moments take on greater significance as the years roll by.
And as is the case with each edition, this year’s “Festival International de Jazz de Montreal” all too soon came to an end this past weekend and I once again found myself leaving with another bag of souvenirs, a soul quenched from some outstanding music, and my heart filled with more memories to cherish and reminisce about sometime in the future. As I left the festival’s grounds for the last time, my eye caught the goodbye message banner hung across the length of the street, as the festival’s mascot cat, Ste-Cat, winked with its eyes.
Looking at this sign, I had another phrase that came to mind which better captured my mood at that point.
“A la prochaine ” – see you next time.
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