Festival International de Jazz de Montréal
- Various locations in Montréal
- On Sunday and Monday
Allen Toussaint is not known as a jazzman but as a songwriter and producer. He was responsible for a string of hits, stretching from Ernie K-Doe's Mother-in-Law to Lee Dorsey's Working in the Coal Mine, the Glen Campbell hit Southern Nights to LaBelle's Lady Marmalade. Add in the likes of Irma Thomas, Elvis Costello, Boz Scaggs and the Band and he's been associated with almost everybody in the business.
Many music buffs know that the 72-year old Toussaint plays piano and sings, but it's doubtful that even the most devoted fans were aware that he could improvise as stunningly as he did during his solo show at Gesù, Centre de Créativité on Sunday.
For the most part, Toussaint's performance took the form of an "And then I wrote…" revue, with him recounting his career as he performed hit after hit after hit. He talked about Java, which became a smash for Al Hirt; revealed how Benny Spellman's singing on Mother-in-Law led to the hit Lipstick Traces; and told the audience how childhood visits to the Louisiana countryside provided the memories that grew into Southern Nights (later a smash for Glen Campbell).
But Toussaint didn't just play the hits - he also played with them, through pranks like sticking a few bars of Mozart into Java when nobody was looking. That bit of mischief took on a life of its own during Everything I Do Gohn Be Funky, a tune he wrote for Lee Dorsey. Branching off from the song's monochromatic blues lick, he lurched into a bit of Chopin's Minute Waltz, and from there free-associated through a dozen or more snippets of classics and pop chestnuts, at one point leaping from Khachaturian's Saber Dance into Beer Barrel Polka.
You could practically hear the jaws hitting the floor.
Toussaint repeated that trick on Monday, when he and the Bright Mississippi band played the Théâtre Jean-Duceppe. This time, though, Saber Dance segued into Chattanooga Choo Choo, while the opening phrases of Grieg's Piano Concerto somehow resolved into the Professor Longhair hit Big Chief.
But then, the whole Bright Mississippi project is about using the familiar to upset expectations. On the face of it, Toussaint and company are paying homage to tradition, performing such New Orleans classics as St. James Infirmary Blues and Sidney Bechet's Egyptian Fantasy. How they played them was thoroughly modern, however, thanks in large part to the skittering virtuosity of Don Byron's clarinet, and the sly funk of David Piltch's bass lines, while Toussaint's own playing was positively luminous.
Steve Kuhn has a reputation as a serious, cerebral jazz pianist, and deservedly so. His set at Gesù late Sunday with bassist David Finck and drummer Joey Baron was marked by thoughtful, deftly swinging, quietly virtuosic renderings of such standards as Blue Bossa and Stella By Starlight. But that doesn't mean Kuhn is above a musical joke or two. During Finck's solo in Slow, Hot Wind, Kuhn inserted a bit of commentary by working a bit of Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder into the piano accompaniment. Finck, however, gave as good as he got, and during the encore followed Kuhn's whimsical vocal on The Zoo with a long, bowed quote from Nature Boy.
Droll characters, these jazz musicians.