Like Gravy on Poutine, Performances by Pink Martini and Its Lead, China Forbes, Elevate Montreal’s Jazz Festival

China Forbes, ‘The Road’ (Heinz Records) and ‘Full Circle’ (single, Heinz Records)Montreal Jazz FestivalThrough Sunday, July 7Hearing Pink Martini at this year’s Montreal Jazz Festival, I never get tired of listening to lead vocalist China Forbes sing the band’s perennials like “Amado Mio” — a Hollywood hit from the 1946 classic “Gilda” — and Ary Barroso’s “Aquarela do Brasil,” a virtual anthem from Rio later transformed into American pop by Tin Pan Alley lyricist Bob Russell. Still, new material is always welcome, and this one highlight is Ms. Forbes doing her relatively-recent original song, “Full Circle” which, myself and the rest of the crowd are delighted to learn, is from a newly released solo album by Ms. Forbes.Pink Martini’s thing, as those of us who have followed the collective, first founded 30 years ago — Happy Anniversary — by pianist-conductor Thomas Lauderdale, know well, is international. The majority of their songs — both “authentic” and those composed by the band members themselves — derive from global Iberian culture; mambos and salsas from Cuba, choros and bossa novas from Brazil, and boleros from all over, like the iconic Mexican ballad “Besame Mucho.” The next biggest source is France and the French-speaking world, which greatly pleased the audience at the Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier at the Place Des Arts. It seems appropriate to have to cross a border to hear Pink Martini and be seated in a theater where they spell it “theatre” and the announcement telling the crowd to put their phones away is en Français. The group is overwhelmingly global in its focus — they conclude with the 1967 South African hit, “Pata Pata.” On her own, Ms. Forbes isn’t so much intercontinental, however, as multi-generational. China Forbes and Pink Martini in performance. Victor Diaz Lamich“Full Circle,” which she sang, accompanying herself at the piano, is a life-lesson lament, out of the rough tradition of Joni Mitchell’s “Circle Game” and James Taylor’s “Secret O’ Life,” in which she contrasts terms like “full circle” and “round robin,” “Hail Mary” and “Half Nelson,” essentially taking old cliches and imbuing them with a kind of power they never had before.Then, the next song shifts gears completely; this is way more retro even than Pink Martini’s age-of-anxiety pop. “Aquarius Heart,” uses banjo and harmonica throughout, to give it an old-timey feel, and is persistently in a jaunty two-four. The lyric winds its way through Zodiac signs in much the same fashion as Jule Styne uses days of the week in his 1926 “Sunday.” Still, Ms. Forbes isn’t evoking pre-World War II jazz sounds but also those latter day stylists like Randy Newman and Harry Connick, Jr., who also make use of those styles. Likewise, “The Northern Line” opens with ukulele and multiple voices in bluegrass-y harmony and quotes from both the traditional spiritual “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” and the folk song “My Darlin’ Clementine” to lead into a highly countrified concoction. Other tracks contrast spare and open acoustic piano, like the title song, “The Road” and the closer, “I Don’t Know,” with those that make use of vast electronic soundscapes powered by digital keyboards, as on “Beautiful World.” “Rise,” starts with the line, “Rise to the surface of the water,” and has a Gospel quality — if she were to have sung it the other night at Montreal, then we’d have all taken out matches, or cigarette lighters, or at the very least our phones with the flashlight, held them in the air and swayed slowly to the rhythm with them. “Beautiful World” also uses 1960s style girl group harmony with Ms. Forbes’s voice enhanced by multi tracking.As we know, there are lots of great reasons to come to Montreal every year at the time of the jazz festival. With the decline of such ambitious presentations in other cities — certainly there hasn’t been anything like it at New York since George Wein retired the last edition of the JVC Fest about 15 years ago — Montreal just may be the best overall jazz festival in the Western Hemisphere. As a festival, it gives me the opportunity to discover “new” musicians. This year the big surprise for me is the drummer-bandleader Makaya McCraven, who has released more than a half dozen albums but somehow I never caught up with him till now — expect to read more about Mr. McCraven in a future column.Plus there’s the city itself, which feels more like Europe — if that’s your thing — than any other destination on this continent. And then there’s the poutine, because who doesn’t like french fries and gravy? I probably gain at least two pounds for each day I’m up here.Still, as much as I enjoy the other aspects of the trip, the main motivation for making the nearly 400-mile drive to Montreal from Manhattan is to hear Pink Martini and especially Ms. Forbes. The rest is merely icing on the cake, or gravy on the poutine. It’s like a migration in which every few years I feel the irresistible urge to come full circle all the way to the North to hear them again.

Like Gravy on Poutine, Performances by Pink Martini and Its Lead, China Forbes, Elevate Montreal’s Jazz Festival

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