Montreal: Jazz Fest, Crate Digging, Riding the Metro, and Injera
⚜️ Montreal feels like my second home.
I know I’ve talked about it too many times before, but I absolutely love Montreal more than any other, except maybe London, which is a close second. The people, the art, the food scene, the multicultural feel of each neighborhood, and a music culture that takes every genre seriously. When the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal began its second and final weekend, Deidra and I drove north to the island city of festivals, originally called Ville-Marie, but known as Montréal since 1726.
If you’ve never been to the International Jazz Fest in Montréal, the scale is hard to explain. Over 350 concerts, two-thirds of which are free, are spread across four main outdoor stages around Place des Arts and a cluster of nearby clubs, theatres, and museums. This year’s edition also honored the centennials of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Tony Bennett, all born in 1926. During our time at the festival, four sets of music stood out.
Tortoise performed Thursday evening inside Théâtre Maisonneuve. It was a show I circled on the calendar months ago. Thirty years on from Millions Now Living Will Never Die, and they still sound like a band from the future. Watching Douglas McCombs, James Elkington (Jeff Parker’s tour replacement), John Herndon, Dan Bitney, and John McEntire lock into those long, patient builds — vibraphone, drums, and guitar circling each other — I was reminded why I fell in love with this indie band from Chicago. No singer, no filler, and no wasted notes… It was my third time seeing them perform since just last November, and the second in less than a week, after the Cambridge, MA show at The Sinclair on June 30th.
The Boston show was more subdued, with less vibraphone played throughout. The Montreal show started out rough, but after the first two pieces, it settled down, and they got into a groove, showing off for the large Jazz Fest crowd.
DOMi & JD BECK are machine-like. She plays the keyboards like she has three hands. He plays the drum kit like he’s operating a drum machine or part of an EDM project, all fast tempos and breakbeats. It’s part jazz fusion and part organic drum and bass, built for the streaming era, but it more than holds up live. They are absurdly good and fun to watch!
We wandered up Rue Sainte-Catherine towards the main stage, which two nights prior had drawn well over 70,000 people to see local favorites Angine de Poitrine play. When we turned the corner, it was a sea of young, passionate, and diverse Saint Levant fans, who performed after a brief weather delay. The crowd was too big, but all remained joyful at the TD Stage as he glided between Arabic, French, and English songs. Oh, and he also played the saxophone and DJ’d after his set. A very talented young artist born in Jerusalem, raised in Gaza, and now living in Jordan.
One of the last bands we saw, on the very last night of the festival, was Etran de L’Aïr, a family band from Niger that plays hypnotic, guitar-driven Saharan desert blues rock. As we walked in, they were playing what seemed like an endless groove, which I loved hearing… Deidra, not so much. We then decided to stand in line and try a new ice cream spot called Iconoglace, a local crème glacée artisanale, and while in line, we spoke with some local Montrealers (or Montréalaises) about the state of the world.
No trip up to Montreal is complete without a pilgrimage to Aux 33 Tours on Avenue du Mont Royal, one of the great record stores in North America. I’m not kidding. Have you been? After browsing almost half the shop and talking to a staff member about the Tortoise show the night before, I left with two used Brian Eno LPs (Evening Star with Robert Fripp + My LIfe in the Bush of Ghosts with David Byrne), a new Om reissue of Variations on a Theme, and a reissue of Première Capsule from Champignons, an early-’70s Quebec psychedelic rock band my wife spotted on the wall. Buying Quebec psych in Quebec felt right, like buying Motown in Detroit. She made a great choice — the record sounds great! It’s hard to describe, but it’s sort of Frank Zappa and The Mothers meets Gong, or somewhere in between.
Later that same day, we ducked into Librairie l’Échange to beat the heat. It’s a small book and music shop further down Mont Royal, and I walked out with a fistful of used CDs for very little Canadian money. I bought CDs by Arvo Pärt, Jon Hassell, Erik Satie, and Philip Glass. I noticed the pattern later on the drive home, somewhere just south of Burlington, Vermont, when Deidra fell asleep. After three days of horns, crowds, loud guitars, and drum solos, I’d instinctively stocked up on silence…
If you didn’t know, Montreal wears its art outdoors. They have a short summer season, but plenty of creative, fascinating street art is found almost everywhere you look.
We walked the Plateau, Little Italy, and over to the Mile End neighborhood, where many, many murals decorate the facades of houses, buildings, and garages. I caught a striking street mural near Rue Sherbrooke on our way into the McCord Stewart Museum for an afternoon of viewing small but powerfully curated exhibits all about Canada and the city of Montreal. It was a thoughtful reminder that a museum can be about a city’s people and its culture, not just its objects. If the MMFA gets all the press, I’d send a friend to the McCord Stewart Museum first. It’s three levels high, and each exhibit takes about an hour each. Our visit ended with a viewing of a beautiful Dior dress, worn by Montreal’s own Céline Dion when she performed on the Eiffel Tower at the Olympic Games in France just two years ago.
We ate well, which is very easy to do in Montreal. Montreal has 28 of Canada’s 100 best restaurants, more than any other city in the country. I made a few reservations but canceled one after an afternoon of eating local strawberries at the Marché Jean-Talon.
We ate at a place we’d dined at before, but not for about ten years! It’s a modern Ethiopian restaurant called Le Nil Bleu, located on Rue Saint Denis. We enjoyed Injera bread with a rich vegetable stew-like dish, red lentils in a spicy sauce, chickpea purée, and a few other interesting vegetarian dishes that I cannot recall. We also imbibed with a good bottle of French wine, and the pleasure of eating with your hands after festival food.
Aux Vivres is a vegan lunch spot on Rue Saint Laurent that actually made us feel human again. Flavorful sauces mixed with fresh vegetables and tempeh, oh my! Another night, we hit Le Central, the food hall off Sainte-Catherine near the Quartier des Spectacles made up of 21 restaurants where Deidra and I could each chase a different craving and meet back at the same community table.
We also spent one golden evening in the Vieux-Montréal, splitting a margarita pizza outside at Jacopo, near Plaza Jacques Cartier by the waterfront, hearing the end of the Cabo Verde and Argentina match, and then watching the sunlight fade behind the St. Lawrence River.
After four days in Montreal, with a little bit of heat and some rain, we headed back to New Hampshire. I had a short stack of records and CDs riding behind me in their proper record bag and a wife who tolerates the phrase “just one more record store” with remarkable grace. (Honestly, we only went to two record stores the entire trip)
We had a great time together, exploring neighborhoods, taking funny pictures, getting soaked while looking for cover during a brief downpour, listening to live music, making many trips back and forth on the Metro (which is a very nice service), and walking about 30 miles total around the city of Montreal during our stay. The city remains what it has always been for me: a diverse center full of amazing people where the music, art, and food aren’t separate itineraries. They’re the same.
Also, I popped into Tim Hortons for an iced coffee, maybe twice… I won’t apologize.
Here’s a playlist of bands from Montreal. Tap the photo below to listen now.
What’s the best thing you’ve ever brought home from a trip? A record, a piece of art, a meal you still think about, or maybe just a simple t-shirt? Thanks for reading!