Before
I get started, I just want to let you all know that I had no earthly idea how
to get that French “accent aigu” (acute accent) over the “e” in Montréal. I was
a pretty good French student back in junior high school but that long predates
word processors. Nonetheless, I managed to find instructions for inserting
accents and this worked:
The basic recipe for
each accent is as follows:
·
Hold down the “CTRL” key and keep it
held down.
·
Tap
and release the punctuation mark which looks the most like the accent
you need.
·
Tap
and release the letter which will have the accent.
·
Let go of the “CTRL” key.
We
spent the past four days at the 40e Festival Internationale de Jazz
de Montréal. Those of you who have been reading this
blog may recall (but probably do not) that we had sort of stumbled on the
festival back in 2015 on a trip to Québec and
Montréal. This time we specifically drove up for the festival, staying in a
hotel right in the heart of the area of downtown where it is held.
One
thing we noticed is that, compared to our last trip, English is much less
common. EVERYTHING is in French, and seldom are the signs or announcements
translated. We had heard that this was the case in Québec, and it makes you
feel much more like you have travelled to a foreign country, which is amazing
since Montréal is only about an hour north of the United States.
This
was on the wall of our room. Clearly it says “BONJOUR” but I am not sure how to
explain the additional letters on it.
These pictures are the view we had from our window. It is really too bad that hotels no longer have windows that open because that would have enabled us to better listen to the music from the comfort of our room in the wee hours when the stage areas were jammed with young people. Much of the music was loud enough to hear but it sounded somewhat muffled.
What follows are some pictures we took and videos I was able to find of some of the performers we especially enjoyed. We had never heard of any of these people. The festival does feature some better-known artists, for whom tickets are required, including Norah Jones, who was there last weekend before we arrived, but we tend to enjoy just roaming around to all the free performances.
One of the real highlights was a young singer/songwriter from Vancouver named Jennie Thai. We so enjoyed her performance that we ended up going to see her twice. Here is a video of her singing one of the songs she performed.
We also enjoyed a band called Razzalaz. I was not able to find anything videos of them on the internet. The band leader, who played a variety of percussion instruments, amused the crowd with witty banter which we unfortunately did not understand.
It is unusual to see a female saxophonist, but Nubya Garcia was really excellent and brought a lot of power to the instrument. This video features an interview with her as well as some of her music.
We enjoyed the Jany Provost Quintette but I was not able to find any videos on-line.
This rather quirky
young performer is named Munya. Towards the end of her set she brought some
children out on stage with her but it was not clear if any of them were hers.
One thing we noted was that a lot of the music, particularly the later evenings performances, was more rock than jazz. Here is an example of a German group, WellBad.
This is the Montréal Dixie Band, a bunch of older guys who are not necessarily the most impressive musicians but are clearly having a great time. They played early on two of the evenings and definitely attracted an older crowd! Here is a 2015 video of them performing in the pedestrian mall.
We did come home yesterday, on the 4th of July, but much as I enjoy fire-works we had to settle for watching on TV. Here is Carole King at The Capital Fourth celebration in Washington DC (at 1:07:43).
Simmie demonstrated that she really is our daughter when she sent the following at 9:39 pm:
I’m in Boston for the fireworks and Arlo Guthrie is about to perform.
Hope everyone had a nice holiday. Have a wonderful weekend!
Love,
Rebecca
No comments:
Post a Comment