It’s the 34th annual Festival International de Jazz de Montreal. MAGNET’s Mitch Myers translates the action.
It was just another hot July night at the Montreal Jazz Fest, and although it was the Fourth of July back home, fireworks and barbeques were the furthest thing from my mind.
Now if Italian pianist Enrico Peiranunzi lived in America, he’d be a bona fide jazz star. Not that the man isn’t already known the world over, but for a superlative player who’s made more than 60 albums as a leader, he’s still criminally overlooked in the United States. Peiranunzi plays jazz and also classical piano, and sometimes mixes the two idioms. He also has a particular fondness for movie music, and for good reason—in the 1980s he worked as a session musician and played on the soundtracks of numerous films by the likes of Fellini and even Leone’s Once Upon A Time In America. At the Cinquieme Salle, Peiranunzi dazzled his audience with a solo performance of grand proportions. He played music from Fellini films as well as compositions by Nino Rota and Ennio Morricone, and reprised his original soundtrack work on Cinema Paradiso. (look it up!)
Of course, the maestro played several original compositions, but it was when he performed and then improvised on the classical works of Domenico Scarlatti (son of Alessandro) that I understood we were in the presence of a true virtuoso. Peiranunzi’s albums are consistently top-notch and often feature talented American musicians as his supporting cast. Try some, by some, etc.
The fact that I could stroll out of such an amazing performance and the walk into a Betty LaVette concert was just icing on the cake. Ms. LaVette is on roll, going from strength to strength these past few years, and her choice of material is unerring. She did a slow burn on Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” and absolutely killed with \ Who epic “Love, Reign O’er Me” from Quadrophenia, as well as the final dramatic tune on LaVette’s own Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook.
Like LaVette says, it took her 50 years to become an overnight success. While most of her old Detroit show-biz peers are retired and living in nursing homes, she’s still singing her ass off and was totally adored by the Montreal audience—which sounds like the best revenge to me.
