Interviews Archive - Page 31 of 114

Kitchen parties are a tradition in themselves among Quebecers of all backgrounds. Eli Levison, a.k.a. DJ Oonga, also known for coordinating the artistic direction of the Mundial Montréal event, professionalized the kitchen parties in his own apartment next to Parc Jeanne-Mance, memorable private parties that gradually evolved into the Sauce Piquante Sound System.

Under the impetus of DJ Oonga, this line-up of variable-geometry artists unfolds this Saturday at Le Ministère, from 10pm until 3am on Sunday morning. What a party!

All the spices of Sauce Piquante Sound System can be found in this global cuisine! It’s ska, rumba, calypso, funk, hip-hop and even punk. DJ Oonga will be joined by singers and rappers KC and Gioco, not to mention instrumentalists, guitarists, percussionists and other motivated voices. And all in French, Spanish, English and Portuguese… Babel Montréal has never been better!

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The innovative Montreal ensemble Collectif9 will be at the Lanaudière Festival on 12 July for a concert based on the principle of folklore. Of course, knowing this string orchestra that does nothing like the others, we can already anticipate some crazy, surprising and perhaps even iconoclastic visions of the clichés and stereotypes it imposes. The groove, the beat, the rhythm, is also likely to be part of the show, in a daring way of course, because Collectif9 is a group of learned music, certainly, but of its time. On the programme: Nicole Lizée, a brilliant creator of eclectic worlds ranging from high art to pop culture. Also: John Zorn, the unclassifiable, Vijay Iyer, a genius of contemporary jazz, and many others. Find out more in our interview with Collectif9’s Andrea Stewart and Thibaut Bertin-Maghit.

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A well-kept secret? Daby Touré became a Montrealer a few years ago, and is now embarking on a new cycle in his public life. An atypical African author, composer and performer, integrating elements of folk, rock and Western-style pop, Daby Touré got off to a flying start when he was spotted by Peter Gabriel and signed to his Real World label, touring with the celebrated British artist.

Two decades later, Daby Touré’s career has been a little more confidential than advertised. From his native Mauritania and the Senegal from which his famous paternal family descended (father and uncles of the famous Touré Kunda group), Daby Touré has continued to transhumance across this land, becoming an authentic citizen of the world. After returning regularly to West Africa, he lived in Paris before settling in Montreal. His albums include Diam (2004), Stereo Spirit (2007), Lang(u)age (2012) and Amonafi (2015).

Daby Touré hasn’t recorded an album in 10 years, but claims to have plenty of new songs up his sleeve. He’s back in action this July 11 at Nuits d’Afrique, who have booked the Fairmount Theatre for his professional comeback. It seems that he has completely rearranged his classics and will be offering us a few previously unreleased songs from his new repertoire. Before that, he tells Alain Brunet the ins and outs of his new Montreal cycle, which may take him to stages around the world.

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Las Karamba is an all-female group from Barcelona, made up mainly of Latin American immigrants.

Two Venezuelans, two Cubans, one Argentinean and one Catalan. After two albums, Las Karamba will be at Nuits d’Afrique for the first time on July 20, at Scène TD in the Quartier des Spectacles, at 8:15pm. Free admission. Michel Labrecque spoke, in Spanish, with two members of this festive yet militant group. Natacha Arizu, Argentine and keyboardist, and Ayvin Bruno, Venezuelan and singer, answer his questions.

PANM360: Tell me about the genesis of this women’s group, how did Las Karamba come about?

Ayvin Bruno: I can say I’m the initiator, it was 2018. In Barcelona, there’s a whole open music scene, which allows jam sessions, where lots of people from many different countries can meet. It was in this context that we formed this all-female group, to tell our stories of migration, from Latin America to Europe. We quickly realized that we had a lot in common, even though we came from different countries. In 2021, Camino Asi, our first album, was released, and in 2024, our second, Te lo Digo Cantando, will be much of what we present in Montreal.

PANM360: It seems to me that the musical denominator between the six of you is a love for Cuban music: salsa, rumba, son, etc. Am I right?

Natacha Arizu: No, although I’m Argentine, I grew up listening to a lot of Cuban music, and it’s the same for the others. There are also two Cuban musicians in the group. So that’s our musical base, but after that, each of us brings a bit of the color of her country and her personal experience.

Ayvin Bruno: But we all have this affinity with the Cuban sound. It’s a dance music that’s recognized internationally. And that unites us.

PANM360: Your music is danceable, but you also want to make people think. What do you want to say in your songs?

Ayvin Bruno: You know, on the whole, Latin music is written from a masculine, even patriarchal, perspective. Because the vast majority of composers were men. Our songs tell our side of the story. They tell of our struggles, our daily lives, our lives as mothers, our anxieties, and also the perspective of our mothers or our ancestors. I think it’s a social necessity to do that.

We also wrote a song in Catalan, since we live in Barcelona and it’s the language of the majority. But, apart from a Catalan woman who’s with us, we tell the story from our perspective as migrants, coming here to tame a new society and offer it the best of us. And now we have the opportunity to tell our stories on an international scale by shooting abroad.

PANM360: As Latin Americans, why did you choose to immigrate to Spain rather than the United States, as so many people do?

Natacha Arizu: For my part, I was attracted by the cultural similarities and the common language. For me, the United States didn’t necessarily represent an ideal. Argentina is largely populated by European immigrants. And what’s happening in the United States at the moment reinforces my choice.

Ayvin Bruno: For my part, I’ve had an Italian passport since the age of 9, thanks to my grandmother. It was much easier to come to Europe. That’s why my sister, who’s also part of Las Karamba, and I have been here for almost 20 years. I have a lot of Venezuelan friends who live in the United States, and their situation is very complicated right now with the new administration. I’m very happy with my choice.

PANM360: And right now, the Spanish economy is doing quite well, and the country seems very happy to welcome immigrants with a common language and culture. Let’s get back to the music: what will you be presenting in Montreal?

Natacha Arizu: These will be 100% original compositions. You’ll be able to dance and think at the same time. It’s a mixture of things.

Ayvin Bruno: You’ll also feel our complicity, our solidarity, which we’re living to the full because we’re constantly together on this tour. Our first in North America.

PANM360: See you in Montreal, at the TD Stage, on July 20!

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This will be a Montreal and Canadian premiere for Blaiz Fayah, an artist who will be bringing us shatta, dancehall from Martinique, as well as reggae and its other derivatives. For the occasion, he’ll be accompanied by his two dancers and his musicians for a festive evening, as he intends to set the place alight. With the release of his album Shatta Ting this year, his notoriety is well established, especially in Latin America, but now it’s Canada’s turn to discover this man who multiplies his hits. Our journalist Sandra Gasana joined him in Paris by videoconference for PANM360.

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Back at the Lanaudière Festival for a first time since 2019, the illustrious violinist Christian Tetzlaff takes on one of the summits of solo violin literature: the JS Bach complete Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin, BWV 1001–1006. We must acknowledge that

this performance offered by this fantastic German violinist will be a physical and intellectual challenge that just a few concert soloists accept. So we’re looking forward to attending this rendez-vous with Bach and Christian Tetzlaff in the intimacy of one of Lanaudière’s most beautiful churches, at the lovely village of Saint-Alphonse-de-Rodriguez. Just a few minutes before his flight to Quebec, Alain Brunet could reach the renowned violinist and have a chat about playing Bach.

PAN M 360: Christian Tetzlaff, you are going to perform in a church located at Saint-Alphonse-de-Rodriguez in the Lanaudière county. You will play what you recorded in 2017, the JS Bach complete sonata and partitas for violon. Of cours, you played those pieces many times before and after this Virgin recording

Christian Tetzlaff: Yeah. I played those pieces over more than 40 years and I played them as a complete cycle for 20 years. It’s the most beautiful and rewarding thing because Bach gets a continuous story in the six pieces, a journey into deep darkness in the D minor Partita in Chaconne and then some kind of feeling of resurrection in the C major and E major and to follow that whole thought that is like a gigantic Bruckner symphony and it goes through all kinds of emotions and physical feelings a human being can have. So, it’s totally fulfilling. Yeah, well, when you play the complete Sonata and Partita works from Bach, as you say, it’s a long journey.

PAN M 360: It’s probably an ongoing process as an interpreter of JS Bach, during your own life.

Christian Tetzlaff: Yes, it is a steady companion, I have to say.

PAN M 360: And how do you see the evolution of your playing through those pieces?

Christian Tetzlaff: Well, like most things, I think the older you get, the simpler and the more direct you get if you allow yourself to be emotionally free. So, I think what I play now is more direct, easier to follow for the audience and more outwardly emotional about knowing what the composer is talking about and trying to find sounds that really convey it nicely. And everything, yeah, naive and easy and the dancey bits more dancey and the dark bits darker. That’s my feeling towards how it has developed over the decades.

PAN M 360: How can we pinpoint the elements of the personality of the violinist when he plays those immortal pieces? In your case, do you pinpoint some elements of your personality sometimes?

Christian Tetzlaff: I hope as little as possible. I hope the idea of the interpreter is to immerse himself into Bach and his music and let it go through him to the audience. And the more you hear, oh, he’s doing this, he’s doing there, and he’s using vibrato here and not there, the less good it is. I should be as much a listener as the audience is. That’s my ideal.

PAN M 360: The concept of interpreting those Partitas and Sonatas has changed also through the years.

Christian Tetzlaff: And certainly not this idea that one’s doing something that speaks out or that is different from other people. Nowadays we are in a time where we have these decades of gathering knowledge about how it was performed and what it meant at that time and how the Baroque era feels somehow. We have these things all inside of the system – because when I started playing these pieces, one couldn’t listen to them properly because it was all about violin playing and majestic chords and impeccable playing.

And nowadays it’s about making music, dancing and singing. So this is a beautiful process which I have actually lived through in my own lifespan from starting in the 70s playing them. And it’s good to see we are in the best time where we can be free with these pieces, but on the basis of their musicality.

If you listen to the Bach Cantatas, you see for every text, for every Cantata, he uses completely different instruments, completely different composing styles, and this freedom in expression to be always excessive and to the point of saying something that is something that we can transfer nowadays into the violin.

PAN M 360: So through the times since the Baroque period when Bach composed those Partitas and Sonatas for violin, how can we see the evolution of the interpretation of those pieces through the periods, through the epochs?

Christian Tetzlaff: I mean, it’s quite atrocious to see what has been done, because violin playing has been so much about the superstar and about the technical ability and the biggest sound and the broadest data, that when you listen to the first recordings that we have, or maybe not the first days, there’s something good, but from the 50s and 60s and 70s, the music behind it is unrecognizable for me, because it is about mastering weird bowing techniques, playing those chords, those four chords divided in two and two. I mean, there was such a distance to what this music is talking about, and that music can be also wild and can also be at times not beautiful, but deep and dark or overjoyed, that the idea of mastering the violin is completely in the way of this. So when they have been performed in the 50s, 60s, 70s, all I know from hearing is very difficult, because everything is so complicated, and so trying to find some violinistic solutions for something that is actually, you have to see what is the context, what is the dance at that time.

PAN M 360: So if I understand, through the years and the decades, the people that are mastering those pieces went closer to the original way to interpret it. This is what you mean?

Christian Tetzlaff: Yes, but original is a difficult word, because we don’t know exactly how this music was played it, but we know a lot of things that did not exist, and many think that are so, in retrospect, so funny and not very smart to deal with it, making it very difficult, those fugues, whereas it’s so easy, because he had to write them in a certain way, but the notation is just the most easy one, and one always plays the melody line a bit longer, but what violinists always tried is to play all the chord full or break them in two and two, which in a piece that always talks about four independent voices, makes it unintelligible.

You cannot understand the simplicity of the beauty of the writing when violinistic you do such complicated thing, and then with constant vibrato, so then you don’t have the ability anymore to say this note I want to highlight and put a beautiful vibrato on it, and the kind of goings that were just measured. There was a time where it was seen as mathematical music and as square… and there is no music that is more alive and human and talking and especially playing by yourself. It allows such freedom to explain the pieces and to make them easy to follow, and this all didn’t exist when people started picking them up in the 20th century. So we live in glorious times for this.

PAN M 36: And by the way we finally may not expect a recreation of what we think it was.

Christian Tetzlaff: Well, that I don’t know, because for instance I play on a modern violin, so the sound it does not match, but what he wants to express, what he wants to express, I think, is informed by how it was played and how his cantatas were played, and he’s not all of a sudden a different composer who forgets about everything when he writes for the solo violin. It’s the same music, the same expressive big music, and we now find ways of making it alive in a different way. Yeah, do you sometimes play it on a baroque instrument? I did a bit, but I find the fascinating thing is with Bach that you can hear a fugue for the piano played by a saxophone quartet, and it sounds totally wonderful if they phrase and understand the music, and it is very touching.

He is slightly beyond the instrumentarium, but it still means you have to have the information how it was played so that you get most out of it.

PAN M 360: Also it must be a great challenge physically, I suppose, to play all those pieces in the same program.

Christian Tetzlaff: Yeah, it is. But that also has two sides. Usually I come into some kind of trance if I play a while and in communication with the audience, and then all of a sudden these pains or these challenges, they go less in a beautiful way.

PAN M 360: A sort of communion adrenaline that makes the pain disappear.

Christian Tetzlaff: Yes!

Originally a gastronomic happening, since 2015 this annual 4-day festival has featured a full musical program, spread over two outdoor stages on the Quai de l’Horloge in the Old Port. From Thursday, July 10 to Sunday, July 13, the Un Goût des Caraïbes festival brings together artisans and artists from the Caribbean diaspora, i.e. from all the islands and all its linguistic groups (Anglo, Franco, Latino) transplanted to the greater Montreal area. The emphasis is on Caribbean culture as a whole, but with a strong musical component made up essentially of local artists, very often in DJ format, accompanied by a few musicians or singers when the occasion lends itself. The focus is on inclusion and intergenerational links, attracting residents of the city’s Caribbean communities as well as (if not more than) all MTL residents, not to mention tourists strolling through the Old Port. That’s why PAN M 360 brings you this video conversation between Alain Brunet and Cezar Brumeanu, artistic director and executive producer of the festival Un goût des Caraïbes.

To access the program, click here!

This interview is dedicated to the programming of the Un Goût des Caraïbes festival, and is also part of a PAN M 360 content partnership with La Vitrine, the largest website devoted daily to cultural outings across Quebec.

To access the Un Goût des Caraïbes festival listing on the La Vitrine website, click here!

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KillaBeatMaker began his musical career some 2 decades ago, earning a Grammy Award nomination. Born, raised and based in Medellin, Columbia, he combines his DJ/producer tools with percussions and traditional flutes, he also sings and beatboxes while keeping an editorial interest on protecting Columbia’s biodiversity under threat. As a DJ/producer, KillaBeatMaker fuses cumbia, champeta, afro-house, afrobeats, amapiano and other african rhythms réinjected in Columbian music. Just before his first show at Montreal’s Nuits d’Afrique (Le Ministère, July 9th), he had a chat with Alain Brunet for PAN M 360.

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From July 8 to 20, 2025, Montreal welcomes the 39th Nuits d’Afrique, featuring more than 700 artists from some 30 countries around the world where Africans and their Afro-descendants from the Caribbean, Latin America and all immigrant lands live. Here come 13 days of indoor concerts and six 6 days of free outdoor programming in the Quartier des spectacles. Brazil’s Flavia Coehlo, Nigeria’s Femi Kuti, Ivory Coast’s Meiway, Algeria’s Labess and Martinique’s Blaiz Fayah are among the headliners of this not-to-be-missed event in Montreal culture. For PAN M 360, Alain Brunet interviewed Sépopo Galley, programmer at Nuits d’Afrique, who traveled the world to bring us the nuggets of this 39th program.

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Singer Climène Zarkan, of Syrian-Lebanese origin, and guitarist Baptiste Ferrandis, whose roots are more European, began their musical relationship by forming a guitar-voice duo. They were inspired to reinterpret songs by Aleppine singer Sabri Mdallal (1918-2006). A group was formed, albums were recorded and concerts were given. SARĀB explores a universe where, by turns, contemporary electric jazz, traditional or popular music from the Levant and quasi-metal rock intertwine, as witnessed by the albums Sarāb (2019), Arwāh Hurra – Âmes libres (2021), Awalebese Tape (2023) and a brand new recording scheduled for this year.

For the first time in Montreal, SARĀB brings us their Arab-Caucasian jazz-rock, which is undoubtedly transcultural. In the context of Nuits d’Afrique 2025, Alain Brunet wanted to find out more about SARĀB ahead of the concert scheduled for Tuesday, July 8 at Le Ministère.

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Vocalist and tenor sax player, Camille Thurman performed on the Molson Pub Stage with her husband Darrell Green on drums and excellent sidemen.

This was “classic” jazz.

Versions of great jazz, McCoy Tyner Atlantis for example, to Burt Bacharach’s classic pop Close to You, Camille Turman showed her fabulous skills on the tenor, powerful and warm sound, deep harmonic knowledge, excellent articulation. And her voice! Magnificent contralto, with a great taste, lushy and elegant phrases. Obviously, Jazz gods are on her side.

And this is why, any jazz aficionado attending PAN M 360 must know Camille Thurman, who became a Montreal hidden treasure.

Not for long !

Saxophone virtuoso and sublime vocalist, this gifted artist from NYC is deeply rooted in the jazz tradition and becoming one of the leading creators and performers of the art form. Now assistant professor in Jazz Performance at the McGill University Schulich School of Music, she pursues a double career of performer and educator.

Montreal is blessed to count on an artist of this level, just look at her prices and honors: among others, NAACP Image Award Nominee for Outstanding Jazz Album, recipient of the SOUTH Arts Creative Jazz Road Artistic Residency, Downbeat Magazine’s Critics Poll Nominee for Rising Star Tenor Saxophonist and Vocalist and Rising New Artist (2023, 2022, 2021 & 2020), two-time winner of the ASCAP Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composers Award.

Camille Thurman was the first woman in 30 years to tour, record, and perform full-time internationally with the world-renowned Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra as a saxophonist/woodwind doubler (2018-2020 season).

PAN M 360: Camille, you’re now living in Montreal because you’re teaching at McGill University. However for music lovers it’s probably more important that you are a great soloist on tenor saxophone and also a great vocalist. Your talent led you among the best, for example the Jazz at the Lincoln Center Orchestra, with Wynton. I won’t name-drop allo your achievements. But Montreal must know you live here and you perform as leader on the last day of the Montreal Jazz Fest. So what and how did you move to Montreal?

Camille Thurman: Well, during the pandemic, I just left the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, and I decided to go back into performing full-time with my project, Camille Thurman and the Darrell Green Quartet, because I’d put that on hold for two years. And we were performing and touring, and I got an opportunity to apply for a professorship up here.

Then I was teaching at the University of Northern Colorado, and my best friend encouraged me. She said, you know, you should apply for this position. And I was like, I don’t know, I mean, I’m working here in New York, and we’re touring. So close to New York. And she was like, well, just give it a try, if it works, it works, if it doesn’t, it doesn’t.

And at the time, my husband, Darrell Green, was applying for a professorship in Vienna. So we both were kind of at a crossroads, where if he got the Vienna professorship, I’d go with him. And if I got Montreal, we’ll see what happens. And sure enough, everything worked out. I did the interview.

Then they said, okay, can you come back for another interview? And I said, okay. And then we did a live class session, and I think it was like a couple of weeks later, they said, hey, we would love to have you, and we would love to have your husband, too.

PAN M 360: That’s the perfect deal !

Camille Thurman: Yeah. I mean, we both were shocked, because it’s not often that you have two world touring musicians finding those jobs. And very close to your hometown. Yeah, close to home, we come to teach at a world-class university in Canada, and most importantly, share what we love and do professionally. Yeah. I mean, and of course, the faculty there was incredible, too, so we thought, okay, let’s take a chance. And we still ended up saying, okay, well, we’re going to live in Montreal part-time, we’re going to live in New York part-time, because our business is still based in New York. And that’s what we’ve been doing: touring, performing, teaching.

PAN M 360: And because the connection between Montreal and New York is strong, it is an ideal situation ! You know that a lot of Montrealers go more often to NYC than Toronto, especially for the music in our case.

Camille Thurman: Oh, yeah, the Montreal students told us. Every time we would go for the Winter Jazz Fest, students would tell us, hey, we’re going to take a car, seven of us are sharing a hotel room, we’re going to see y’all.

PAN M 360: And if you look at the architecture of Montreal, it often looks like Brooklyn and Queens, for example.

Camille Thurman: Yeah, it’s so true.

PAN M 360: Both are East Coast cities of the Industrial Revolution. Boston, Montreal, and New York are very connected, historically. Yeah, and the history, too. Yeah, well, the Mont-Royal Park has designed by Holmsted, who did the Central Park and Prospect Park in NYC.

Camille Thurman: That’s right. Yeah. And then jazz history, too.

I mean, Oscar Peterson.

PAN M 360: Yeah OP without a doubt ! So you’re involved, also, with your husband, you are both band leaders, artists in the same business ! It’s also a perfect match for professional life and private life, because you can travel together, you teach together in the same school, so how can you expect better ?!

Camille Thurman: Yeah, we create together. I’m extremely blessed to have met and get to work with Darrel Green. He’s a phenomenal drummer. Yeah, and of course, an incredible educator. It’s just been such a great blessing working with him and collaborating on our projects together.

We both have our own background, but bringing that together, it’s just been such a treat to be able to tour and perform the music that we compose and write together, and then double teach the students, and they watch it. We can be touring over the weekend somewhere, and then get to class 10 a.m. on a Tuesday morning and be like, okay, class, let’s talk about some chord changes today, and the kids are like, okay, so we saw you on Instagram, y’all are in such and such, how is that gig ? But let’s talk about that, and you’re like, no, no, no, let’s deal with the lesson.

PAN M 360: Well, you can do both, but it’s always very attractive for students to have a persona like yours to be a sort of role model at the same time, so they’re obviously interested in your performances. And I suppose they transcribe your solos haha!

Camille Thurman: It’s such a joy, I mean, we talk about the students all the time whenever we finish courses, and we’re always thinking, okay, well, what if we did this, or what if we did that? So it’s beautiful to see that there is a connection between us. They’re watching us, and we’re trying to make sure we’re giving them the best that we can give them when we’re with them.

PAN M 360 : What is your perception of Montreal after a few months living here?

Camille Thurman: When I first got here, it reminded me of being in Europe but with a North America vibe. So, you don’t have to fly six hours. It’s right here. And the people have been wonderful. The students that we’ve been working with at McGill have been fantastic to work with. And then it’s just that the scene is just vibrant. Wonderful professors too – John Hollenbeck, Joe Sullivan, Kevin Dean, Jean-Michel Pilc, Ranee Lee…

PAN M 360: Cool, cool. Now, let’s talk about the music that you’re performing this summer. Can you describe the band and the repertoire you’re performing?

Camille Thurman: Sure. Well, we just are now wrapping up a tour that we’ve been on for the last week and a half. We started off in New York City at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, we ended up in Wisconsin, and then we ended up in Chicago, and then we just finished in Cincinnati, and Montreal is the last stop. Yeah, it’s been a great week and a half of just playing and meeting people. The band, I am proud to say, is one of the fiercest cats, well, they’re all fierce musicians. You have Paul Beaudry on the bass. He’s phenomenal as a bassist, and he’s a band leader in his own right. We also have a young up-and-coming pianist who’s talented from Philadelphia by the name of Jordan Williams. We also have a wonderful young lion on trumpet, Wallace Roney Jr, son of Wallace Roney and Geri Allen. And then, of course, we have Darrel Green on the drums, and then yours truly on voice and saxophone.

PAN M 360 : And the repertoire you’re actually presenting ?

Camille Thurman: We just released an album called Confluence Vol.1 Alhambra. We’re going to play some of the pieces off of that project, as well as some other pieces from some different projects that we’ve been working on – we’ve been working on a project that features the music of Burt Bacharach that we kind of reimagined and rearranged in a whole new way, and so far the audiences have been liking it.

PAN M 360: About your voice, you grew up as an excellent student, and finally you found out you were also a singer.

Camille Thurman: It’s funny, because I had an interesting journey in discovering my voice, and in fact, I kept it a secret that I would sing. Because when I was much younger and I started playing the saxophone, I knew right away, being a young lady playing a tenor saxophone, people would just kind of look at you and like, oh, you don’t play that thing.

And after over and over dealing with that at 13 or 14, I was like, I’m never going to say that I’m a singer, because they always assume a singer. I’m just going to try to be the best that I could be on the saxophone. And it wasn’t until my 20s that my mentor, Antoine Roney, encouraged me to also sing professionally. And said, you know, some of the greatest musicians in the world were both singers and instrumentalists – Shirley Horne, Nat King Cole, Louis Jordan… Then something just clicked.

I was like, what am I doing? I’m sitting on a beautiful gift that God blessed me. It’s two gifts. And Antoine really helped me as a mentor shape and mold the vision that I wanted as a vocalist and an instrumentalist.

And it opened up my mind. There’s things that vocally I think now I have a freer understanding of exploring because I play the saxophone and vice versa. There’s things as a saxophonist I have a freer understanding and exploring because of my knowledge as a vocalist.

PAN M 360: As a tenor player, did you have some role models ?

Camille Thurman: Oh, yeah. Antoine Roney. Antoine, yeah. George Coleman. He’s my heart. I love him. Yeah. And then, of course, Joe Henderson, John Coltrane, Dexter Gordon.

PAN M 360: Yeah. The lineage. And you are into this tradition yourself.

Camille Thurman: Thank you. Yeah.

PAN M 360: You have a sort of, I wouldn’t say classical jazz approach, but you’re very, very close to tradition. You’re into this lineage. Your contribution at first glance is not so evident, but when we go deep, it’s like a classical musician now. Every great player has their own voice, but we have to listen very carefully to discover it :when it’s rooted in the jazz tradition.

Camille Thurman: Yeah. I believe that when people inspire you, there’s pieces of people that represent who you are as a whole artist. And for me, I grew up listening and inspired by so many artists. And again, because of playing and singing, it’s created this unique sound. Yeah.

PAN M 360: About your training. How much time do you spend on your voice and your saxophone playing?

Camille Thurman: I don’t calculate that. I mean, I think it’s just a matter of you always constantly thinking about the music. So it’s not a matter of, okay, I’m going to set aside 10 hours of practice. It’s whether you’re traveling or you’re walking, you’re always thinking and working it out.

PAN M 360: Do you try to reach a balance between your voice and tenor playing ?

Camille Thurman: I just see them as one entity. And the voice is an instrument in itself.

PAN M 360: It gives you a unique perspective in approaching sound, harmony, melody, phrasing, and I just think of it as one whole instrument.

Camille Thurman : That’s true.

PAN M 360: And the best way to approach a melodic instrument is to think about the voice.Camille Thurman: That’s right. It’s the foundation of all music. The voice is the first ever instrument and it still is.

Photo: Emmanuel Novak Bélanger

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The environment is an important issue for this collective from the Democratic Republic of Congo, who will be performing at the 39th Nuits d’Afrique Festival. In fact, they transform metal, wood and plastic objects to make their instruments, creating new sounds never heard before. Our journalist Michel Labrecque met them for PAN M 360, and was even treated to a surprise at the end of the interview.

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