The Montreal Jazz Festival is upon us once again and this year (the thirtieth anniversary) we are lucky enough to be blessed with the genius of Stevie Wonder in a free concert (whom I consider to be the Mozart of our era). Just a few days after his friend Michael Jackson’s death, this is certain to be a highly emotional affair.
Not to mention that this year, Montreal has re-jiggered its urban planning to include a massive new piazza right in the center of town: Place Des Festivals (architect Daoust Lestage ). And so how did this tremendous impact on our urban landscape come about? There are many explanations and idiosyncrasies to the Montreal Jazz Festival story, but I wanted to try to look at it from its origin.
Like many grand schemes, the Montreal Jazz Festival (holder of the Guinness Book of World Records largest jazz festival) was conceived in Naples.
Stationed there in 1943 to teach painting and music to orphans for the Red Cross, Elaine Lorillard, ne Guthrie (born in rural, coastal Maine), had a wartime romance with jazz, as well as with her future husband Louis Lorillard, a direct descendent of the 19th century tobacco tycoon Pierre Lorillard. Louis had climbed to be a finance officer on WWII U.S. General George Patton’s staff, and Elaine and her future husband had their first dates in Naples’ underground jazz clubs as the city came to terms with its occupation by the Allied Forces.
In 1946 Elaine returned from Italy, got her divorce, married Louis and the couple became fixtures on the ruling class Newport, RI scene. And it was Elaine who came up with the financing and passion for the outdoor jazz festival model known throughout Canada (and the world, and today so essential a figure on Montreal’s summer calendar, and economy).
Newport 55 was inspired. Elaine invited U.S. Senator Green to inaugurate the festival, preparing a speech for him in which she claimed jazz to be a “revolutionary force”, comparing its impact and music with the impact and politics of the American revolutionaries of 1776. Miles Davis proceeded to bring the house down with his ethereal rendition of Thelonius Monk’s Round Midnight and jazz could never be the same again.
Canada is a very popular tourist destination for African Americans, probably because Canada played such an important part in ending slavery. Harriet Tubman was in St. Catherine’s for several years leading up to the Civil War orchestrating the Underground Railroad from its destination: to the African American, Canada still represents freedom.
Because Montréal is Canada’s historic metropole (it is only in the last 40 years that Toronto has eclipsed Montréal as Canada’s premier city) it seems that Montréal is the cultural inheritor of this element of Canada’s history, ensuring that the Union of the United States of America has a partner should any new confederation of dunces try to up and secede on the basis of the right to hold slaves….
Kudos to the producers of the festival for bringing Stevie Wonder to inaugurate our new piazza; my hope is that the Place des Festivals will always be such an important stage for the freedom of expression.
