Music for 'outcats' at Suoni Per Il Popolo festival

MONTREAL - If so-called avant-garde, experimental, freely improvised music has always been somewhat marginalized ? ?edgy? being perhaps a polite euphemism for ?weird? ? it has company in more widely accepted genres.

After all, the conservative ?mouldy figs? of the jazz establishment once dissed bebop ? the lingua franca of jazz for the last 65 years, with its ferocious speed and wild dissonances ? as ?Chinese music.? And, before that, the swing era and big-band jazz of the ?30s and ?40s ? the only time when ?hot jazz? was truly America?s popular music, accompanied by mob scenes and frenetic dancing ? was accused of leading young people down the garden path toward licentiousness, sex, vice and other horrors.

Putting music played by leading ?outcats? (a term invented by the fine jazz critic Francis Davis) front and centre has always been the goal of the Suoni Per Il Popolo festival, now in its 11th season, running for three weeks starting June 5. In true post-modern fashion, the festival, run by the folks responsible for that mecca on the Main for new music (Casa del Popolo and La Sala Rossa), makes no snobbish distinctions between types or schools of music. In becoming a viable alternative to the more populist Montreal International Jazz Festival, this year it presents some of the most illustrious artists in the free/whatever domain.

This year?s edition also coincides with the recent publication of Music Is Rapid Transportation: From the Beatles to Xenakis (published by Charivari), a collaborative effort by seven critic-fans (including McGill professor Lawrence Joseph) that makes the connections between starting out on pop music and graduating toward more difficult fare. The book?s genius ? and what makes it, to my knowledge, unique and much needed ? is that it doesn?t put down one type of music at the expense of the other. Pop or jazz ?police? ? and resulting hierarchies ? are not welcome here.

The writers, of different age groups and backgrounds, describe the most influential music in their lives, from Dylan to Steve Reich, the Velvet Underground to Archie Shepp (the eclecticism is remarkable, leading to a terrific reading experience). The writing is both charmingly personal and widely informed, lending friendly hands to explore their musical journeys and epiphanies. The book demystifies music that?s too commonly thought of as inaccessible or the purview of an elite few (a narrow self-serving myth sometimes pushed by those elites to separate themselves from what H.L. Mencken satirically called the ?booboisie?).

The book?s intimacy (keynoted by childhood photos of the writers) reflects the close quarters of the Suoni fest?s locales. There is no better way to experience outbound music than up close and personal, as a shared experience between creators and listeners, each feeding off the other. (Recordings offer, at best, a solitary meditative experience, while cavernous environments like the Bell Centre are downright alienating to music created ?in-the-moment.?)

Consider Music Is Rapid Transportation as a glorified program book for the Suoni fest. Among the event?s many highlights are the following:

Multi-saxophonist David S. Ware (in his first Canadian outing in nearly a decade, during which time he received a life-saving kidney transplant), is described by Nate Chinen of the New York Times as ?a force-of-nature improviser,? and by BBC Music?s Daniel Spicer as ?astonishing, pushing the limits of brain, fingers and equipment, ideas rushing out in a stream of furious, liquid invention, with an almost superhuman precision.? Ware calls his approach ?so-called free,? because, as he told JazzTimes last year, ?there?s a hell of a lot more to it. If you?re not practising all the time, you can?t do it. And if you don?t have a wellspring of ideas, you can?t do it.?

German saxophonist Peter Br?tzmann, 70, is arguably the greatest European hard-blower, ?projecting power and technical prowess even as he interpreted ballads,? according to Gazette colleague Irwin Block in his report on the recent Festival international de musique actuelle de Victoriaville. His playing reminded the late great Don Cherry of a machine gun; as Joachim-Ernst Berendt and Gunther Huesmann explain in their authoritative Jazz Book, his ?aim was to destroy, and thereby overcome, obsolete models of playing,? then construct a vocabulary ?that made him one of the most convincing storytellers of European free jazz.?

Tenorman and bass clarinetist Charles Gayle, 72, is one of the great mystery men and comeback stories in jazz. He was part of the storied free-jazz scene of the ?60s (indebted to Albert Ayler), then disappeared into oblivion, often homeless. He re-emerged in the ?80s and a plethora of records in the ?90s made him ?one of the great energy players of the decade? (according to veteran critic John Corbett).

Another intriguing combination is The Thing, the incendiary Norwegian rhythm section of Paal Nilssen-Love and Ingebrigt H. Flaten, Swedish saxophonist Mats Gustafsson and American legend Joe McPhee. As if to put lie to free-jazz stereotypes, they will be interpreting material by rockers The White Stripes, PJ Harvey and Yeah Yeah Yeahs, among others.

One of the Suoni fest?s kindred spirits and inspirations is the imposing William Parker, who can truly be said to be the first great advance in bass playing since Charles Mingus. He also is the guiding light behind New York?s Vision Festival, itself an alternative to the Newport fest. He?ll be appearing in Farmers by Nature, featuring Craig Taborn (with a new solo piano CD on the prestigious ECM label) and Gerald Cleaver (drums). This will be the trio?s North American debut of its first studio CD, Out of This World?s Distortions (AUM Fidelity), before heading on a European tour.

And finally, for something completely different: Bernard Herrmann?s hysterical soundtrack for the Alfred Hitchcock classic Vertigo, performed by the Lost Orchestra, which is made up of members of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Arcade Fire, the Besnard Lakes, Land of Kush and more.

Suoni Per Il Popolo takes place at Casa del Popolo, La Sala Rossa, Il Motore and Cin?ma Blue Sunshine from June 5 to 25. Tickets are available at Cheap Thrills (514-844-8988), L?Oblique (514-499-1323), Atom Heart (514-843-8484) and Phonopolis (514-270-4442) as well as the main Casa box office (514-284-0122). For more details, visit www.suoniperilpopolo.org.

rodriguez.music@gmail.com

? Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette

Source: http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/Music+outcats+Suoni+Popolo+festival/4864600/story.html

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