Montreal, Day 3

A combination of deadlines that I hadn’t managed to meet before skipping town the other day and the intermittent downpours that finally paid off the threatening storm clouds that have been throwing their muscle around for the past few days kept me close to or in the hotel on Friday. But much of my non-festival time here has simply been spent wandering what is a very wanderable city.

It’s a somewhat oddly integrated city – high-end shopping shares the same block with nude dancers, quaint creperies sit comfortably side by side with signs sporting cartoon condoms. Without even leaving the festival grounds you can step into a mall food court opening into the underground city or stroll into a dive-y pizza joint. It’s as if Broad, Chestnut and South Streets suddenly had to decide how to coexist on the same block.

Not that one really even has to leave the festival grounds. There’s always something on at least one or two of the multiple stages (I swear I’m still going to stumble across another one hidden away in a corner I’ve failed to chance upon, or disguised by the construction that’s developing the site into an even more expansive event center), and in between there are stilt walkers, hula hoopers, card tricksters, and fire jugglers aplenty to distract the easily amused.

For those who appreciate more difficult entertainment, there was Wayne Shorter’s majestic quartet. An injury kept regular pianist Danilo Perez at home, which was cause for alarm; this is one of the most highly attuned units in jazz, who over the past several years have become something nearly inexplicable in their abilities to create something that organically transcends the notes on the page.

With Geoffrey Keezer occupying the bench, they weren’t quite that tonight. The substitution exposed the framework a bit, revealing the transitions between tunes (there’s never a break in the music) where normally the whole thing becomes an amorphous organism from which melodies and synchronicities appear like changes in expression. But Keezer brought a sharper, more forceful attack, which egged drummer Brian Blade into leaping off of his stool on several occasions – more than once, he had to regather the kit that he’d pushed away from himself.

Shorter spent a good bit of the performance engaging directly with Keezer, encouraging and coaxing, sparring with him when something the pianist did piqued his imagination. He stuck with the tenor for most of the evening, as opposed to his most recent, haunting Kimmel Center appearance, where he was just as interested in whistling into the mic. It was a wholly different show than it would have been had Perez been able, but still an amazing experience.