Jazz has slipped into the first concert proposals on the poster for the Suoni per il Popolo festival – “sounds for the people”, translation from Italian -, which begins on Friday and will animate a few halls in the metropolis until to June 29. To open, the return to Montreal, a few weeks after her concert at the OK LÀ festival, of composer and avant-jazz multi-instrumentalist Angel Bat Dawid, who will join free jazz saxophonist Joe McPhee and the Montreal ensemble Silvervest 3. The next day, again at the Sala Rossa, the art rock-jazz fusion group Thus Owls will get their revenge.
His revenge on fate, nothing less. The Montreal orchestra led by Erika and Simon Angell launched on March 4 the exquisite Who Would Hold You If The Sky Betrayed Us?, one of the best Quebec albums of the season. Such a feat deserved the public reception it deserves, expected a few weeks later. The concert was canceled at the last minute: several musicians of the group then nabbed the new variant, which forced the resumption of the show on Saturday, at the Sala Rossa.
A blessing in disguise: Thus Owls opening the Suoni per il Popolo, it’s symbolic. “The big theme of our new album revolves around these questions: Who are we? What does it mean, culturally, to go and live elsewhere? What does it mean, to belong to something or somewhere, to participate in something? explained the composer and singer Erika Angell, met with her partner and collaborator, Simon, last March.
Thus Owls and Suoni per il Popolo ask the same questions in their own way. Originally from Sweden, Erika engineered Thus Owls’ first album with Simon in Europe, “and if you listen to it again, you’ll notice that free jazz was all over the place she adds, switching from English to French during the conversation.
“We had just founded the group, we didn’t really know what we wanted to do at the time. “Thus Owls then relocated to Montreal, “it forced us to meet new people, for me, to learn to live in this city and, consequently, to experience an identity crisis: who am I here? Through its eclectic and inclusive programming, Suoni per il Popolo seems to be constantly searching for an answer to this question: who are we, in this city of festivals and music?
“Belonging to a scene concerns us as musicians, but it also concerns the public,” adds Erika. How do we get people to participate, get involved in what we do? We thought about that while designing our new album. It’s one thing to build a new social network, a new pool of musical collaborators, but it’s above all a question of communication, between us and with the public. »
Jazz showed the way for the members of Thus Owls. This new album, concedes Simon Angell, is the most committed to jazz: “This music is at the heart of the album, in the saxophones” held by Claire Devlin, Adam Kinner and Jason Sharp. “Three saxophones, all colors, mixed with our voices, synthesizers, bass and drums”, played by Samuel Joly, who completes the basic trio of the group. “We just said, Erika and I: ‘Fuck it, we do what we want! At this stage of our lives and our careers, we do what we want.” »
The result is stunning. The brass orchestrations breathe life into the compositions of Erika, Simon and Samuel. The structure remains rooted in the exploratory rock song that made Thus Owls famous, but the language has evolved by borrowing the syntax of jazz, which the Angells were trained in — Simon notes that “half, maybe two-thirds of the album was composed; everything else was improvised. It was important to work in this way, since we come from there, improvisation”.
Erika’s voice even seems more assertive than before. “On a stage, I become a singer, a person, very present, at the heart of the action, but it has always been difficult to maintain this energy in the studio, on record. When recording our album, we found it important to capture this energy, while keeping the sessions open to improvisation. It had to remain unpredictable, that’s how I feel I can take my place. »