We're looking forward to 8 days of great jazz and great food in Montreal

A tour group from Virginia exploring the Place des Arts In Montreal as preparations continue for the city's International Jazz Festival, which begins today and runs through July 9.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

MONTREAL -- After a good night's sleep and a big breakfast, we are looking forward to seeing and hearing Gregory Porter, the American who took a 2014 Grammy for best jazz vocal album.

This French-Canadian island city is hosting the 37th edition of what is often called the best jazz festival in the world.

Porter will perform tonight in Theatre Maisonneuve, one of the concert halls in the Place des Arts that make up this city's bigger and better version of Manhattan's Lincoln Center.

We also have tickets to see Joey Alexander, the Indonesian child prodigy who released his first jazz album in 2015 at age 11; singer Lauryn Hill and others through July 7.

We're also looking forward to exploring restaurants and markets in a city with world-renowned food. 

Hundreds of free concerts at outdoor stages and in tents begin at 11 a.m. and end at midnight during the 11-day festival. Ticketed concerts are in halls, nightclubs and other venues in or near the Place des Arts, above.

The Hyatt Regency, headquarters hotel for the festival, is part of the Complexe Desjardins, above, a link in a vast network of shops, restaurants, offices and subway stations known as Underground Montreal. 

A bowl of yogurt, granola, dried fruit and nuts is available as part of a groaning-board breakfast at the hotel.

The breakfast includes made-to-order omelets, ham, string beans and much more.

After 36 years, the Montreal jazz festival could entertain a name change

Jazz singer Dee Dee Bridgewater, whose voice truly is an instrument, in front of the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra on Friday night at Theater Maisonneuve in Montreal.

Editor's note: During our visit to Montreal, I keep on hearing the line from Shakespeare, "If music be the food of love, play on." That fits. We love the city's annual jazz festival, and can't resist all of the wonderful food.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

MONTREAL -- Just when I thought I've seen absolutely the best concert ever at the annual International Jazz Festival, an artist comes along and tops it.

On Friday night, that was Dee Dee Bridgewater, who surely is the world's No. 1 jazz singer, male or female.

Backed by the 15-piece New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, Bridgewater sang both joyous and dirge-like songs associated with the Big Easy -- including "St. James Infirmary," "House of the Rising Sun" and "Treme" -- that wowed a packed house in Theater Maisonneuve.

And her scatting imitated trumpets and trombones in the band, a performance that brought the audience to its feet.

Scatting from Dee Dee Bridgewater, left, added another trumpet to the orchestra's section.

Orchestra leader Irvin Mayfield at the head of a line of musicians as they waltzed up and down the aisles to end the concert triumphantly. Encores followed.

Flamenco and gospel, too

Our first concert this year, the 36th edition of the festival, was a spirited flamenco performance, and tonight, our last will be a large gospel choir.

As soon as the gospel concert is over, we plan to rush outside for the festival finale, a free two-hour tribute to blues legend B.B. King.

So, I'm sure I'm not the first to suggest the International Jazz Festival might want to insert the words "and World Music" into the name. 

The 10-day festival scheduled 300 concerts, from noon to midnight, many of them free. Venues ranged from outdoor stages with no seating to tents to nightclubs to grand concert halls.

We had front-row seats for Lo Esencial, called "pure, authentic flamenco," close enough to see the perspiration coating the faces of dancers Ana Perez and Kuky Santiago, and feel the swish of her dress' long, ruffled train.

On Saturday night, we also were seated in the first row at a concert by jazz singer Patricia Barber, who sat down at the piano and immediately took off her shoes and socks.

For The Record is described as a "wild performance troop," and this year, the singers, dancers and musicians presented a wicked cabaret performance based on music from the films of Australian director Baz Luhrmann.

Again, we were in the first row and had to pull our feet out of the way as the performers danced between the stage and the audience.

Jamie Cullum and Jessie Cook

We saw Jamie Cullum, the jazz singer from England, backed by a 15-piece band, most of them Montreal musicians, and he introduced each one by name.

Cullum, who has the energy of a rock singer, bounded onto the stage, and played a drum and nearly every part of the piano, including the keys, case, rim and interior strings.

Toronto-bred flamenco guitarist Jesse Cook and his band recalled the Andalusian rhythms we heard at our first concert, and we loved their acoustic encores.

Last Monday, the stylish Erykah Badu packed the biggest hall, Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier, and soon had more than 2,900 people on their feet for her performance, which was so highly amplified I couldn't understand many of the lyrics.

I was alone, because everyone else seemed to know the words and sang along. And Badu invited her fans to turn the 10 feet to 15 feet between the stage and first row into a dance floor.

Montreal audiences have no equal. Their enthusiasm is infectious. They're thrilled when an artist speaks to them in French, even if only a few words. And they roar their approval of a great performance. 

Escaping the cocoon

Guests of the Hyatt Regency, headquarter hotel for the festival, never have leave the air-conditioned comfort of the Complexe Desjardins, an enclosed mall on which it is built, and the adjoining Place des Artes, part of a vast network called Underground Montreal.

Said to spread over 20 miles, the network, connected by the city's Metro, was developed to cope with brutal winters and unpredictable summer weather, especially a rainy June.

Everything is within a short, climate-controlled walk: Food, from fast to food court to fine-dining; shops, a supermarket, and more concert halls than in Manhattan's Lincoln Center.

On Friday night, after that incredible Dee Dee Bridgewater concert, we decided to go outside and see who was performing at 10 p.m., instead of using underground passages to the hotel.

Then, after a singer took the stage, we wanted to return to the hotel, and got caught in pedestrian gridlock for 15 minutes before we reached our hotel entrance. 

At Rambla, a new Spanish restaurant in East Montreal, my starter on Saturday night was a winner: Cooked and raw vegetables served on a bed of minced black beets and pureed avocado. They were served in a large sardine tin.

East Montreal

On Saturday, we strolled up St. Catherine Street to East Montreal, where we found an art festival, natural food stores and many restaurants with platforms for outdoor seating.

We returned for dinner by subway -- our first meal in a week outside the hotel and food court -- and chose a Spanish restaurant, Rambla.

Plenty went wrong with the service, and the tab topped $100 with two glasses of red wine, tax and tip (the U.S. dollar is worth about $1.20 Canadian), but we enjoyed the food and the lively scene, including a combo playing in front of the Metro entrance.

We discovered East Montreal, like Manhattan's East Village, is the center of gay life in the French Canadian city.

At Rambla, the waitress never asked my wife how she wanted her steak cooked, and it had to be sent back twice ($21).

I told the waitress I don't eat meat, but my marinated trout came topped with Iberico ham, which I gave to my wife ($19). We probably should have ordered a paella to share from the limited menu.

Rambla and most restaurants on St. Catherine Street East have outdoor seating, and open dining rooms.

That could mean people at indoor tables, like us, have to contend with flies.

A small tin of organic extra-virgin olive oil from Spain is on every table at Rambla. I drizzled oil over my starter of vegetables, and dipped bread crusts in it.

A glass of Spanish red wine was $8.

Details

Rambla, 1272 St. Catherine St. East, at Visitation, Montreal, QC.

On this year's trip to Montreal, we traveled very well on our stomachs

Roasted Root Vegetable Salad at The Red Mill Restaurant in Vergennes, Vt., below.

The Red Mill is on the grounds of the Basin Harbor Club, an upscale resort on Lake Champlain in northwestern Vermont that also has a formal dining room.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

MONTREAL -- The food is so bad at service plazas on the New York State Thruway we always prepared our own for the 360-mile trip to this French Canadian city for the annual International Jazz Festival.

This year, we were able to avoid that fast food altogether and enjoy the same high quality we're used to when eating in or eating out at home.

I'm a big fan of the homemade soups I've enjoyed at the Whole Foods Market in Paramus, N.J., and I was delighted to see another Whole Foods outside Albany, N.Y. ,where we stopped to charge our all-electric car.

My 8-ounce cup of Portuguese White Bean and Kale Soup was so full of greens I could have eaten it with a fork.

My wife had an 8-ounce cup of Chicken Soup that looked and tasted homemade ($3.79 each).

That's pricey, but you can get more value by filling your cup with as much kale, beans, poultry and so forth, along with a minimum of broth.

Root vegetables, goat cheese

Our second stop on Saturday was in Vergennes, Vt., where we had lunch in The Red Mill Restaurant on the grounds of the Basin Harbor Club.

I loved my Lemon Chickpea Soup ($4 for a cup), and my main dish, a Roasted Root Vegetable Salad, was dressed in a terrific lemon vinaigrette ($8).

Besides the root vegetables, including garlic, the salad was filled with arugula and some crumbled Vermont goat cheese.

My wife had Sriracha Chicken Wings ($10) and a side of Sweet Potato Fries ($2), which were a bargain and irresistible, too.

This Adirondack Chair at the Basin Harbor Club will easily accommodate a fairy tale giant.

Whole Foods Market at the Colonie Center outside Albany, N.Y., a mall near the New York Thruway, lists all the ingredients in its homemade soups.

Whole Foods Market at the Colonie Center has a bakery, pizzeria and a large selection of hot and cold foods, and salads, many of them made with organic ingredients.

At $9.99 for a 25-ounce jar, Jersey Italian Gravy from Ridgewood, not far from where we live in northern New Jersey, is definitely not a Whole Foods Market offer that is too good to refuse.

A trio of Lebanese specialties at a food court in Montreal.

Baba Fine Lebanese Cuisine is one of close to two dozen food stands in the Complexe Desjardins, an enclosed mall in Montreal, but the hummus didn't live up to the billing.

The food court is where Montreal residents, including the homeless, and tourists go for an inexpensive meal.

Lebanese food in Montreal

Instead of a price-fixed lunch in a fine dining restaurant on Sunday, we tried the food court in the Complexe Desjardin, an enclosed mall under our hotel, the Hyatt Regency Montreal.

Among the ethnic stands, Baba drew my attention as a lover of Middle Eastern food.

I ordered three small plates for me and my wife to share -- Hummus, Tabbouleh and Potatoes with Garlic -- at $2.99 each, and the server threw in a medium, Lebanese-style pocket bread.

The bread was terrific -- thin Lebanese pocket bread baked in Montreal appears almost daily on the shelves of Middle Eastern food stores in Paterson, N.J. -- but the other dishes were only OK. 

The hummus was bland, completely devoid of garlic and lemon juice, and I had to ask for a splash of extra-virgin olive oil.

The chopped parsley and tomato in the tabbouleh tasted good, but the salad contained only a little bulgur wheat.

We liked the Potatoes with Garlic best. They were crowned with a wonderful garlicky mayonnaise, and I used some of it to give the bland hummus a little kick.

Details

Whole Foods Market Albany, 1245 Central Ave., Colonie, N.Y., in the Colonie Center shopping mall.

The Red Mill Restaurant, 4800 Basin Harbor Road, Vergennes, Vt.; 1-800-678-8946.

Baba Fine Lebanese Cuisine in the Complexe Desjardins, 150 St. Catherine St. West, Level 2, Montreal, QC.

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Jazz, food, city views and more vacation photos from Montreal

A man on stilts amusing the crowd during Montreal's annual International Jazz Festival, widely acknowledged as the best in the world. The 11-day festival -- the French Canadian city's 35th -- wrapped up on July 6. 

There are free and ticketed performances 12 hours a day outdoors, in clubs, and in small and large concert spaces. This group gave a free concert of New Orleans jazz.

Every style of vocal and instrumental jazz, blues and funk can be heard at free concerts, such as this one by a big band.

Montreal pianist and composer Alain Lefevre and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra performed Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue," Bernstein's "Symphonic Dances from West Side Story" and other compositions on June 26 in a packed Maison Symphonique, drawing standing ovations. Members of the orchestra tuned up before the concert, above. The hall opened in 2011.

Lefevre also performed as part of a jazz trio. On July 1, I heard jazz pianist Brad Mehldau in a solo concert at Maison Symphonique.

Jazz vocalist Dianne Reeves wowing the audience on June 27 in Theatre

Maisonneuve, one of the major concert halls grouped together on the Place des Arts, similar to Lincoln Center in Manhattan.

A singer named Buika, an African woman who was born in Spain and now lives in Miami, performing with her flamenco-inspired trio on June 29 in Theatre Maisonneuve. Her many fans in the audience sang along with her. On July 1, we returned to the same hall for a wonderful concert by jazz singer Stacey Kent, a New Jersey native.

The Little School of Jazz entertaining children and their parents at one of their daily performances inside Complexe Desjardins, above and below, part of a vast underground network of malls, supermarkets, office buildings, hotels and subway stations in Montreal.

Ty Tyler, vocalist with the soul band Vintage Trouble, is the reincarnation of James Brown, and he packed them in for a free outdoor concert on July 1 that saw him leave the stage and climb one of the light and camera towers in the plaza.

Diana Ross, above and below, gave a sold-out concert on July 3 in Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier, but her strong voice often was drowned out by her big band, which included a Latin percussionist. She sang only one song from "Lady Sings the Blues," the 1972 film in which she played jazz singer Billie Holiday.

Diana Ross also didn't address the audience very much, in contrast to her daughter, Rhonda Ross, who opened for her with a small band and three back-up singers. Rhonda Ross spoke in perfect French to the mostly French-speaking audience and sang half of a song in that language, drawing a roar of approval.

A free concert and an appreciative audience on a mild evening in Montreal's Place des Arts, above and below, as seen from the terrace of the Hyatt Regency, the headquarters hotel for the annual festival.

Bistro SAQ is one of the pop-up restaurants on festival grounds.

Montreal has a visible homeless population. Not far from where this man was sleeping downtown, another homeless man in heavily stained clothing was reaching into the large garbage cans inside a Burger King, searching for something edible. We saw a young woman in baggy skinny jeans panhandling drivers stopped on University Street.

Bicycle lanes downtown carry two-way traffic, in contrast to those in Manhattan. The island of Montreal is larger than Manhattan island, but fewer people live there and traffic congestion never approaches the nightmarish proportions in New York.

This 1985 sculpture, called "The Illuminated Crowd," draws a lot of attention from pedestrians in downtown Montreal. 

One of the entrances to Montreal's Chinatown, which seems to have as many Vietnamese restaurants as Chinese ones. One restaurant we wanted to visit was Orange Rouge, which serves Thai, Korean, Chinese and Japanese dishes at 106 De La Gauchetiere ouest, but we ran out of time.

Want Chinese roast duck for dinner?

One of the many Vietnamese restaurants in Chinatown, below.

Montreal's Jean Talon Market is the only one I know that offers free samples of fruits and vegetables, but no toothpicks.

Prince Edward Island oysters on the half-shell are $2.50 to $3 Canadian each, if you want to eat them at this counter in Jean Talon.

Across from the oyster bar, a fish market offers live lobsters for $10.99 Canadian a pound and also sells fried smelts and other seafood that can be eaten at picnic tables.

Restaurants, charcuteries and other food shops line streets surrounding Jean Talon.

Hanging flower pots and street signs in Montreal's Outremont section, near Vanhorne, a restaurant with "cuisine du marche" or "cooking from the market."

A Vietnamese restaurant outside of Chinatown.

One of two large electric fireplaces at a McDonald's in a service area on Route 15, not far from Saint Sauveur, Quebec.

A World Cup-themed Big Mac, which contains mystery meat in any language. McDonald's is the "official restaurant" of the FIFA World Cup, the international soccer competition.

Travelers line up to order at McDonald's.

Hotel de Ville or City Hall in Old Montreal.

Old Montreal slopes down to the Saint Lawrence River, below.

From Old Montreal, tourists can see the island where a Formula 1 race is held every June. It can be reached by Montreal's Metro or subway.

Metro cars run on rubber tires, making them quieter inside and out than Manhattan's subway, though Montreal's system isn't as extensive. A single ride costs $3 Canadian.

Eaton Center downtown is one of the city's enclosed malls linked by the subway.

 

A passageway in Complexe Desjardins, which includes a mall, food court, hotel, office buildings, major concerts halls and a subway station, Place des Arts. On July 2, I heard jazz pianist Randy Weston and saxophonist Billy Harper in Cinquieme Salle, a small concert space off of this passageway. Weston, who was heavily influenced by trips to Africa, told the audience nature was the first orchestra.

A valet parking attendant in the Complexe Desjardins, which has a multilevel garage with about 1,000 spaces.

The KPMG Tower in downtown Montreal.

A church spire reflected in glass sheathing an office building.

A sign on a Montreal hospital. Cardiac teams have their work cut out for them in view of the rich French diet. In some restaurants, servers are amused when you ask for food cooked without artery clogging butter and cream, assuring you only "a little is used."