The Montreal International Jazz Festival hit the mark yesterday with its programming choices. Quiet, on a Monday evening downtown? It depends: with Jean-Michel Blais on the Place des Festivals, the crowd was certainly not going to dance, but rather to commune. However, this crowd was as dense as on a beautiful Saturday evening, while at Place des Arts the venerable Herbie Hancock was struggling on piano and keyboards. Fast program.
In all honesty, we entered the Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier with the impression that this concert in Montreal by the legend Hancock, 83, could well be his last. Rather, we came away with the assurance that he still had enough energy left for at least one more visit: accompanied by four excellent musicians – including the imaginative Beninese-born guitarist Lionel Loueke and the accomplished Terence Blanchard at the trumpet – the pianist distributed the grooves, and the jokes, for more than two hours.
He seemed happy to find this room, full to bursting, which he had visited the last time already five years ago; the musician first took the time to address the audience at length, in particular to warn them that the beginning of the evening was going to be the strangest, before sitting down at the piano to lead the orchestra in what he named his “Overture”, a sort of quilt of passages from several works from his repertoire during which Blanchard and his trumpet with its sonority manipulated by effects pedals imposed themselves.
We quickly tip our hat to the master: his solos were always remarkably clear, the sense of rhythm as lively and ingenious, the melodic passages as complex as before. After some twenty minutes of the opening, Hancock introduced his accompanists (add James Genus on bass and the young Jaylen Petinaud on drums) and paid tribute to his old friend who died last March, saxophonist Wayne Shorter, his accomplice within the second quintet of Miles Davis, interpreting his composition Footprintsfrom his album Adam’s Apple (1967). The arrangements, Hancock said, bear the signature of Blanchard, whose opera Fire Shut Up in My Bones was presented by the Metropolitan Opera, under the direction of Yannick Nézet-Séguin, in 2021.
Breathing tribute, followed by a dive into jazz fusion of which Hancock was one of the great engineers and promoters in the 1970s, with among others Actual Prooffrom the album Thurst (1974), set in motion by a mind-blowing guitar solo by Loueke, and Come Running to Mefrom the album sunshine (1978), during which Herbie began to joke around for (too?) long minutes with his vocoder. The musicians exchanged solos, Herbie switching from synth to piano, erecting sophisticated grooves. Before going to the encore, the crowd got carried away when they recognized the mythical synthetic bass line of Chameleon (from the classic Headhunters1973), which he played standing in front of us, on his flamboyant keytar.
The first part of this concert was chaotic, but certainly entertaining. DOMi&JD Beck, a Franco-American duo in their early twenties, arrive on their small decorated stage, she on roller skates, sitting on a bench shaped like a toilet seat – with the paper unrolled on the floor. JD settles down to his very small drums, on which he will type with sickly precision, playing the breakbeats as if programmed by Squarepusher.
The French throws some. Plays electric bass solos on the top keyboard with his left hand, alternates with an electric piano solo from the right, as his feet tap the organ pedal board to play other deep bass patterns. The two prodigies play like a trio… as a duo, inspired by the fusional work of Hancock and Weather Report, which they will also perform, in addition to the original songs from their album. Not Tightreleased last year.
There is obviously a lot of self-mockery in the title of this first career record, since DOMi & JD Beck are impressive technicians who will only go off the rails when DOMi’s on-board computer does its thing during the concert. “Tomorrow, I promise, I’ll change my instrument – I’ll play the flute! “, joked the musician, about the concert that the duo will give on the Place des Festivals, at 9:30 p.m. If their performance certainly lacks soul, the musicians playing at full speed compositions with elaborate rhythmic structures, their humor , their enthusiasm and their virtuosity undoubtedly provide a real spectacle.
We left Wilfrid-Pelletier before the Hancock quintet had taken a bite out of their encores to take the pulse of Jean-Michel Blais, on the Place des Festivals. Two observations: first, the attention of the crowd, visibly absorbed by the work of the composer and those who interpreted it. A rare quality of listening from a crowd of this size who had packed in the heat to appreciate the performance of Blais and his ten musicians, led by conductor Dmitri Zrajevski.
Then, the sound: was it due to the ambient humidity to be cut with a knife? It was as if the water particles in suspension favored the distribution of sound waves in the city center. This orchestra had volume, power, right up to the shops on rue Sainte-Catherine. Unfortunately, we were only able to appreciate a handful of songs (including those benefiting from the electronic treatment of the special guest CFCF) at the end of this concert which looked like a triumph for Jean-Michel Blais.