In the 2000s, Blanche Baillargeon made a name for herself with DJ Champion’s G Strings. Since then, she has also distinguished herself with Christine Tassan’s gypsy jazz and Misses Satchmo jazz, but few music lovers are aware of her personal work.

Well… she wasn’t well known until last spring, when her new project Le Nid sparked things off with unsuspecting music lovers, including our dear colleague Sylvain Cormier, who was full of praise for her. In fact, Blanche Baillargeon has been making her compositional language public since 2015, and her recent opus Le Nid was the main material for this concert presented at Le Ministère.

The rustle of the forest, the flight of birds, the light in the landscape, freedom, happiness, malaise, hope and empathy are all sources of inspiration for these mostly ethereal and gentle jazz songs. Pianist Chantale Morin, drummer Sacha Daoud, bass clarinettist Guillaume Bourque and flautist Alex Dodier (who can play sax in other contexts), all excellent musicians with extensive jazz experience, accompany the double bassist in this Off Jazz context.

The music here is a composite of songs expressed in French (lyrics by master poet Patrice Desbiens) and Brazilian Portuguese, including the cover of Chico Buarque’s “Samba e Amor,” and other original jazz-samba/bossa nova-inspired proposals. Blanche Baillargeon’s musical references are clearly jazz, but they are also tinged with Brazilian and Cape Verdean music that is part of the global collective imagination, and with French chanson that also draws on the romantic and modern music of the Western classical tradition.

The result is voluptuous, enveloping chamber jazz, harmonically and melodically rich, and a pleasure to listen to. No peak performance is required of each performer or improviser, rather the composer seeks to create a coherent, cohesive whole around her works. Personally, I preferred the non-Brazilian moments of this repertoire on the Sunday evening program, as I sometimes had the impression of a certain disparity between these noble tropical inspirations of the 60s-70s-80s and the rest of her original compositions, which are fresher and… more original.

Photo credit: Jean-Pierre Dubé

Erika Angell’s artistic life is distinct from that of her excellent band Thus Owls, whose creative core she forms with her guitarist husband, Simon Angell. She is becoming increasingly regular, notably as part of the trio Beatings Are in The Body, which we heard last June at Suoni Per Il Popolo, and more recently Sunday evening in solo and duo at Le Ministère, as part of the Off Festival de jazz de Montréal.

Poetry, song and sound are at the heart of this subtle, unique approach. The magnificent voice of this gifted Montreal artist is the absolute lever of her expression; the choice of words (English and Swedish, her mother tongue), sometimes declaimed without melody, is also brilliant but does not serve songs built on frameworks that have been standardized for ages. Musically, Erika Angell uses continuous synthetic sounds, a kind of drone around which she makes brilliant superimpositions. The musician is equipped with a small keyboard, light percussion and other electronic tools, which she uses in real-time. The compositional structures are not complex in themselves, but a melodic-harmonic continuum on which various ornaments of varying degrees of intensity are placed. And it does!

A kind of exploratory ambient music with sung or spoken texts, Erika Angell’s art can also involve the intervention of drummer Mili Hong, a Canadian resident originally from South Korea. This gifted percussionist can intervene randomly with the updated vocabulary of free jazz, but can also express her skill on sustained rhythms. She listens carefully to Erika Angell’s ideas and adds to those of her employee, who, at the risk of rambling, deserves to be known and recognized for her true worth.

Photo credit: Jean-Pierre Dubé

In the spring of 2021, as the venues begin to reopen, bassist Fraser Hollins and his band, the aptly named Phoeni are now soaring to ever greater heights.

As one of the first performers at our beloved OFF Jazz Festival, this band featuring Hollins on bass and Phoenix on double bass, Hollins on bass, Samuel Blais on reeds, Carlos Jiménez on guitar, Richardson on guitar, Rich Irwin on drums. What an excellent showcase for the immense local talent we seem to have in abundance!

The audience was treated to a graceful and compelling set of Hollins’ original music in the warmly lit hall of the Diese Onze. Wielding his double bass like a musical oracle, he led the way with a line requiring spidery fingering, drawing us into the heart of the piece and the performance. The premiere was in fact a tribute to Stan Lee!

Clearly, the compositions and arrangements for this dynamic group of friends are a testament to his talent, and that’s what made the evening so special. evening.

Each composition varied in genre, mood and texture, allowing this group of seasoned musicians to express themselves freely, telling us many different stories over the course of the evening.

This weekend, Arion Orchestre Baroque presents its opening concert with Maskoutain pianist Élisabeth Pion as guest soloist, in a concert whose main attraction is the (re)premiere of works by French composer Hélène de Montgeroult (1764-1836).

A great visionary, the rare aristocrat to have been spared by the French Revolution and the only woman to have passed the competitive examination to teach the first piano classes at the Paris Conservatoire de Musique, Montgeroult’s musical language is imbued with the palette of Mozart’s classicism, but with a few experiments that hint at the beginning of Romanticism.

After the orchestra’s introduction of Mozart’s Symphony No. 26, allowing us to appreciate Mathieu Lussier’s energetic conducting, the soloist presented Montgeroult’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-flat major, which the composer constructed as an adaptation of Viotti’s violin concertos.

The instrument here is worthy of mention, as it lends full relief to the “historically informed” spirit of the concert. Played on a Broadwood 1826 forte-piano, on loan from patron Jacques Marchand, the instrument offers a woodier, less resonant sound than modern pianos, but allows greater agility than a harpsichord.

The airy agility of Élisabeth Pion’s fingering is illustrated in the energetic first movement, while the second features a melodic line of great lyricism reminiscent of Chopin, but without the great melancholy flights of the Preludes or Nocturnes, for example. The third movement, Rondo: Allegretto, is resolutely Beethovenian in character, with its bouncy strings and the piano’s place in it, as in L’Empereur.

In the second half of the concert, Mathieu Lussier presents a reconstruction of Montgeroult’s works. Having composed very little for orchestra, Lussier decided to arrange several Montgeroult pieces in the form of an overture, L’impératrice.

The typical lively-slow-fast scheme and choice of orchestration allow us to appreciate Montgeroult’s language in Mozartian and Beethovenian territory.

Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor was the scene of a complicit dialogue between soloist and conductor, but the winds seemed a little too generous in their amplitude of sound, making it difficult for Élisabeth Pion’s playing to stand out at certain moments.

The Mozart and Montgeroult concert is presented today, Saturday and Sunday at Salle Bourgie. A concert well worth braving the rain for, if only to discover the luminous music of Hélène de Montgeroult.

Photo credit : Frederik Robitaille

On Thursday at the Ministère, pianist and composer François Bourassa kicked off the 24th Off Festival de jazz de Montréal, originally set up to showcase the local community of jazz artists then neglected by the Festival international de jazz de Montréal – unlike in the 80s and 90s. Since then, local jazz at the FIJM has been reduced to a local series and a few outdoor stages, while the OFF presents some thirty concerts each autumn. And here we are!

A double program on the François Bourassa side.

Put forward by composer, arranger, improviser and saxophonist Philippe Côté, the Confluence project consists of a composite work involving contemporary music inspired by classical and jazz. Recorded in New York last year and soon to be released on the Odd Sound label, the duo’s repertoire brings together their interest in exploration, particularly that of the prepared piano, a practice made famous by the American John Cage. The technique involves inserting objects into the piano strings that the soundboard controls. This produces unusual sounds, sometimes akin to the marimba. The compositions on the program are generally simple, with plenty of room for improvisation. Sometimes two pianos are prepared, sometimes just one; exchanges may involve two pianos, or saxophones (soprano or tenor) and piano. This music leaves plenty of room for free improvisation, but harmony (tonal or modal) remains present throughout the experience.

In the second half of the program, François Bourassa’s excellent quartet returned to the Off Festival de Jazz. A quarter-century of practice has brought this ensemble to an exceptional maturity, making it a unique voice for Quebec jazz on the entire jazz planet. The supravirtuosity of saxophonist André Leroux and the compositional excellence of François Bourassa are the keys to this expression, which nonetheless rests on impeccable rhythmic support, courtesy of Guillaume Pilote and Guy Boisvert. Thursday evening was (once again) a testament to this cohesion and inspiration. François Bourassa’s profound knowledge of contemporary music in the classical and jazz traditions has led him to build a virtuoso language free of academic constraints. This vehicle has led him to accomplish small miracles, and the album Swirl, recently released on the Effendi label, demonstrates the formal advances he has made, as they clearly go beyond the usual framework of jazz in a small formation.

Since the beginnings of modern jazz, musicians have generally played a melodic theme (head for those in the know) with the accompaniment of the rhythm section, followed by a section in which all the performers improvise solos, then return to the intro melody at the end of the performance. François Bourassa no longer exploits this form (or exploits it very little), preferring to inscribe his colleagues’ impros in different and varied structures. Once again, we see the march towards the union of the jazz and classical worlds, a process that is now inevitable. One thing’s for sure, François Bourassa is a key figure in this process, much to the delight of music lovers.