Occupy Montreal

Pilgrimage to Montreal – An American Point of View

Imagine walking into a space where circus acts, Minotaurs on stilts and jets of cool water rising right out of the ground are commonplace. Add to that wine and beer stands, piping hot poutine and juicy hotdogs and you’ve got yourself many happy people. Pile on top of that 11 indoor concert venues and five outdoor stages where musical acts infuse the air with trippy drum taps, haunting woodwind instruments and voices that inspire chills and you’ve entered the wonderland that is the Montreal Jazz Festival.

This 10-day festival attracts people from across the globe; from enthusiastic performers to music lovers. This uniquely bilingual city has established itself as the place to be, especially for Americans who make the pilgrimage here.

Connecticut-based Gerald Clark has been coming to the Jazz Festival since 2001. His feelings are clear. “Montreal’s Jazz Festival is head and shoulders above all other jazz concerts. Its breadth and quality is unsurpassed, even when comparing it to Newport, which in the US is usually considered top of the food chain,” he says.

Featuring hundreds of concerts, most of which are free, summer in Montreal is a hub for music lovers everywhere. And though it is called a jazz festival, Walter Bond from New Jersey has a different perspective for the kind of music represented every June in this vibrant city. “To me it’s more of a world festival. A lot of the concerts are by artists from a variety of countries and they tend to exhibit music that’s part of their culture, so there’s plenty of jazz, but there are a lot of other types of music too,” he says.

From Blues to traditional jazz, African and Latin American-inspired tunes to Dixieland, rock to reggae, the Jazz Festival has something to offer every melomaniac out there. Despite the impressive musical line-up represented over the past 32 years, however, it is not only jazz that keeps Americans coming back.

Serena Shulman is a newcomer to Montreal. A New Yorker, she decided to come to Montreal at her friends’ recommendation. “I’m not a real jazz fanatic,” she says.  “I was just listening and appreciating it practically for the first time myself.  The experience of being there: lying in the grass, just listening to jazz, it was nice.”

Her impressions of the festival, however, were eclipsed by her perception of Montreal as a whole. “I would definitely come back,” she says. “People here are so nice. In New York, people are like monsters. They don’t have common courtesy.”

Allison Man, another New Yorker, also felt Montreal’s unique heartbeat. “I think the city is very well organized,” she says.  “It gives tourists a great opportunity to choose what we want to see so it isn’t overwhelming.  They have a nice mix of different types of jazz musicians and it is very in line with what I expected.”

The Montreal Jazz Festival has become a popular destination for Americans. Couple local and international talent with a welcoming and cosmopolitan city and our friends south of the border will keep coming back for more.

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