Au Festival International de Jazz de Montréal, les experts de PAN M 360 assistent aux concerts qui secouent les mélomanes. Suivez notre équipe !
Tank & The Bangas, 2023 New Orleans Jambalaya
crédit photo: Benoît Rousseau
We associate New Orleans with Louis Armstrong, Wynton Marsalis and his family, Terence Blanchard and so many brass bands. In short, jazz in its many forms.
But New Orleans is also funk, R&B and bounce, as we call the regional variety of hip-hop. If there’s one band that embodies the musical fusion of the Louisiana metropolis in 2023, it’s Tank and the Bangas.
This group blends all the styles of New Orleans and makes its own sound, just as the city’s Creole cuisine blends French, West Indian, Spanish and American cuisine.
Last night on the Place des Festivals, Tarriona “Tank” Bell and friends demonstrated this flamboyantly. The whole band was dressed in red, in the image of the Red Balloon album, released in 2022. There was no doubt about it: we were going to dance, raise our arms and clap our hands, but in front of an elaborate musical canvas.
Saxophonist and flutist Etienne Stoufflet breathes jazz soul into the band. Jonathan Johnson’s bass provides the funk base. And the rest of the band joins in. But there is no Tank and the Bangas without Tank Bell, who is the epicenter of the band. Tank can sing soul, rap, wax poetic, shout, whisper. The crowd follows. The curvaceous singer is both a strong and vulnerable woman, and that’s what moves the audience.
Throughout the evening, the band will alternate between furious rhythms and introspective ballads.
A beautiful evening, a warm evening! The smiles on the faces of the diverse crowd were enough to convince anyone.
Michel Labreque
Chucho’s immense legacy
crédit photo: Frédérique Ménard-Aubin
Pianist Jesus “Chucho” Valdes is a Latin jazz monument, as much for his colossal physique as for his immense contribution to modern jazz of Latin American inspiration and African descent. Once leader and principal composer of the legendary Cuban group Irakere, Chucho has long been Ze reference for Latin jazz piano, despite the ever-present (and still ridiculous) tensions with Los Estados Unidos.
In 2023? We’ll forgive the octogenarian for strictly managing his estate, much to the delight of his fans who packed the Théâtre Maisonneuve to capacity on Thursday night.
An octogenarian in full possession of his powers, the pianist and his brilliant acolytes perfectly summed up this legacy in a warm performance.
Chucho’s technique has long been considered exemplary: Soviet-style classical training (in his impros, we heard him still quoting Mozart, Chopin, Debussy, Rachmaninov), a complete knowledge of modern and contemporary jazz piano (his cover of Chick Corea’s « Armando’s Rhumba » was cool), and his own contribution in adapting this knowledge to the piano grooves and music of Cuba – Rubén Gonzales, Frank Emilio, Emiliano Salvador, etc. – which he has also developed in his own way.
Of course, we owe him some singular innovations at the keyboard, notably those ultra-fast motifs executed in ostinato by the right hand, in perfect synchronicity with melodies or other harmonic motifs articulated by the left hand. Of course, tumbaos and other typical Latin piano devices are also on Chico’s menu, and he expresses himself almost exclusively in Spanish. Can you blame him for picking and choosing? Sometimes, his percussive exuberance on the ivories is a bit too much as far as I’m concerned, but people love that kind of overflow in Latin jazz. What more can I say?
As you might guess, the legendary pianist doesn’t surround himself with celery stalks: Horacio Hernandez, drums, José A. Gola, bass, Roberto Jr. Vizcaino, percussion. This congas supravirtuoso was particularly impressive, his hallucinatory mastery of Afro-Latin percussion reminiscent of great masters such as Giovanni Hidalgo.
This Afro-Cuban rhythm section was simply breathtaking, and this Chucho Valdés ensemble, now 81, presented the nec plus ultra of Latin jazz, of course linked to another era, that of his generation. We salute them.
Alain Brunet
Kassa Overall: Jazz-Hip-Hop Fun Chaos
crédit photo: Marie-Emmanuelle Laurin
Busy, a tad messy, groovy, always friendly. A graduate of the famous Oberlin Conservatory in Ohio, this Seattle-born drummer is also a rapper and singer. His vocal skills, however, are less impressive than his remarkable percussive abilities. His flow is not like that of his guests (Danny Brown, Lil B, Shabazz Palaces, etc.) on his album Animals, released this year by Warp, a label normally inclined to electronic music, but this time open to jazz with beatmaking. His vocals are tenuous, and not always right in front of an audience, but Kazza Overall manages well despite his shortcomings.
Alongside Kazza Overall, excellent percussionist Bendji Allonce (a Montreal native) expresses his Haitian culture by including voodoo and Afro-Caribbean patterns in his approach; fluid pianist Ian Fink possesses the necessary assets for an international career; on soprano sax and percussion including drums, multi-instrumentalist Tomoki Sandera brings beautiful colors and the support of bassist Giulio Xavier Cetto proves impeccable.
Kazza Overall, 40, grew up with hip-hop and perfected his education in jazz and classical percussion, his project clearly fuses all the constituent elements of his personal culture, and this culture is unpacked in a joyous mess on stage, chaos nevertheless organized despite a few moments of wandering.
Alain Brunet
Colin Stetson and The Infinite Breath
In a darkened Gèsu, furnished with abstract projections and stroboscopic effects, it felt more like Suoni Per Il Popolo than FIJM. This no doubt explains the hasty departure of a handful of spectators from Colin Stetson’s first multiphonic complaints. Insiders, on the other hand, were well served.
The musician was alone on stage, but the sound sources were multiple. Stetson developed his iconoclastic style by stapling microphones all over his air columns. Among other things, this intricate pickup allows percussive playing on the instrument’s keys to be brought out, as well as the subtlest dynamics of breath on contact with the mouthpiece. A piezo sensor placed on the throat also amplifies vocal effects, which are then modulated as they pass through the instrument. Even knowing this, the performance was no less mystifying, as we sometimes struggled to identify which combination of techniques could produce complex textures. Yet there were no pedals or loops involved.
When listening to his albums, it’s easy to forget the prowess required for such a performance, when it’s always theoretically possible to fall back on overdubbed recordings or post-production work.
Seeing Colin Stetson perform immediately confronts the listener with the fact of his circular breathing, which seems to be able to go on forever at will. In full control of his sonic universe, the saxophonist delivered a hypnotic performance of his repertoire, which was centered on relatively drone-like pieces with long developments.In addition to a selection of pieces from his latest album When We Were That What Wept for the Sea, a few more rhythmically-based pieces from All of this I do for Glory would have rounded off the program nicely.
Laurent Bellemare
