The evening of June 25 saw Fortner perform a solo show at Gesú Concert Hall, near the end of a packed first day of the Montreal International Jazz Festival. Fortner darted quickly onto the stage, phone in one hand and a paper cup of steaming hot tea in the other, smiling at the crowd. “As per usual, I don’t know what I’m gonna do,” he said, and the audience responded with a nervous chuckle. “Bear with me.” 

Seated at a Kawai grand piano, he began with a crowd favourite, “Don’t You Worry ’Bout a Thing” by Stevie Wonder — an interpretation long-time Fortner fans knew from his 2023 album Solo Game. 

“Don’t You Worry ’Bout A Thing” began with a sparse and fleeting arrangement of the famous verse.  Throughout the tune, different sporadic ideas, bubbling up from the deepest depths and raining down from the highest registers of the piano, began to enter into a clear conversation with the main melody, creating a shimmering veil of harmony. In interviews, Fortner has said that he sees harmony as a “set of simultaneous melodies” — an idea stemming straight from classical counterpoint and Ellingtonian composition. As he broadened his harmonic and rhythmic horizons over the course of the song, it became clear that this was not just a catchphrase: it was a core philosophy of Fortner’s playing. It would be easy to imagine each finger having a mind of its own, constantly in a battle between its own desires and the resolution of the larger harmonic theme. The melody, which is ordinarily relegated to the highest voice of an arrangement, was shifted time and again between hands and across different octaves, much as Ravel or Beethoven would transfer thematic motifs through different sections of a symphony orchestra. All of this was overlaid with a masterful articulation and touch, where different voices would come out of the blue, suddenly taking dynamic precedence at times even over the main melody. While many may think of harmony strictly as a way to embellish melody, the care and attention Fortner gave to every harmonic idea made it clear that he didn’t view things in such a straightforwardly hierarchical way. 

He deconstructed “Don’t Worry ’Bout a Thing” piece by piece, peering at each harmonic and rhythmic idea from a few different angles before returning it to its place to fiddle with a new theme. Throughout this demonstration of mastery, Fortner maintained an air of ease and a playful touch. His tapping foot, a quiet onlooker for most of the tune, gradually became a participating accompanist, matching the instrument’s volume as Fortner entered a dynamic peak before fading again into the background of the simple verse. Fortner ended the tune just as he’d started it: with the simplicity of the Stevie Wonder classic.

Fortner’s trademark harmonic exceptionalism and his favoured use of deconstruction were put on pause for a profoundly simple rendition of Oscar Peterson’s L’Impossible. While interpreted by Peterson in certain instances as a Bossa Nova, Fortner’s performance skewed more towards a genre-ambiguous, sine-like purity. A steady offbeat chordal ostinato sounded for nearly the entire duration of the piece, providing a novel departure from the pianist’s relentless explorative rhythmic and harmonic forays. He kept Peterson’s simple diatonic melody relatively free of ornamentation, allowing the audience space to focus on the sound of the piano, the beauty of the melody, and his precise articulation. The peaceful etude seemed to wind its way through gentle hills and across expansive valleys before ending abruptly to nearly everyone’s surprise. The audience was left almost offended: what happened to the melody?! The steadiness and timelessness? Perhaps that’s just what happens, and it is certainly what Fortner intended. 

In addition to being one of jazz’s most cherished legends, Oscar Peterson grew up in the heart of Montreal, where he is now celebrated as one of the city’s most prolific artistic innovators. Fortner evidently took advantage of the location of this venue to highlight Peterson’s legacy — In addition to L’Impossible, his set included a piece from Peterson’s Canadiana Suite, entitled Place St. Henri in honour of the composer’s childhood neighbourhood in south-west Montreal. 

Place St. Henri showcased Fortner’s expertise and knowledge of the jazz repertoire in fiery fashion. Jumping into the tune from a tense silence, his hands slid rapidly from the polar ranges of the concert grand towards middle C, before converging and floating into the higher register in synchrony. This synchrony proved to be short-lived, however, when Fortner proceeded to enter into the familiar out-in left-hand stride pattern championed by everyone from James P. Johnson and Art Tatum to Oscar Peterson. While stride piano is well regarded at all tempos, Fortner decided to employ it at a virtuosically fast clip while his right hand flew around the upper keys in a blur evoking the song’s composer. The audience was already in awe, but Fortner took it further up a notch, dialing up the tempo and the intensity with unwavering precision. An audible murmur and dispersed laughter could be heard throughout the audience. 

Even as the fiery rampage of the piano reached an immensity in volume that seemed to overtake the man at its keys, there was no question that he alone still held the reins. Fortner, who had been peering at the audience and swaying back and forth throughout the show, was now 100 per cent focused. Hunched over, he kept his eyes glued to his darting hands. Just as the heat reached peak ferocity, Fortner dialed back to his tempo primo — a masterful demonstration of tension and release. Then, before anyone could even get the idea of relaxing, Fortner gave a bold flourish, halting the momentum completely with a bang on a low note and jumped clean out of his seat, bolting off the stage. Almost instantly, the audience erupted in almost disbelieving applause. Fortner walked back onstage moments later to a standing ovation.

Once the audience had collected themselves, a final ballad resonated through the concert hall, contemplative and lush. Fortner rounded out the soft tune before following it with a sweeping final cadenza, paying homage to the dualities that had characterized the whole show: a blend of fast and slow, complexity mirrored against simplicity, order balancing chaos. These are the ingredients with which Fortner works, and from my experience are highlighted especially during his solo performances. 

After all, Fortner is not simply a pianist. He is, first and foremost, an arranger — an expert at organizing and rearranging complex webs of rhythm and harmony to create something with as much scope as an orchestral composition within the 88 keys of his instrument. Every tune he plays is orchestrated with a distinct texture, evocative of a range of feelings. With a back pocket full of arranging techniques to pull from, built up over a lifetime of training and experience, every set Fortner plays is guaranteed to be completely unique. What unites them is his humour, insight, and musicality, which suffuses every piece he plays with his distinctive musical fingerprint. Fortner frequently tours with acclaimed vocalist Cecile McLorin Salvant, and his piano trio with Tyrone Allen and Kayvon Gordon (releasing an album, Leave That In There, in late August). While these groups are all incredible in their own ways as distinguished faces of modern jazz, an opportunity to see one of Fortner’s rare solo shows should not be missed.

The post Review: Sullivan Fortner Solo at Gesú Concert Hall appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Since 1980, Jazz Fest has attracted world-class musicians and music lovers alike with a dazzling week of free shows and musical exploration. In what has become the largest jazz festival in the world, both established legends and rising stars of jazz and adjacent genres take to public outdoor stages in and around Place Des Arts during the 10-day event. Over the years, the festival has hosted a plethora of household names, including Miles Davis, Oscar Peterson–a jazz pianist and hometown hero raised in Little Burgundy, Ray Charles, Dave Brubeck, and Aretha Franklin. This years’ festival highlights some of the brightest global talents in music from veteran Charles Lloyd to Earth, Wind & Fire to Immanuel Wilkins.

In addition, many local Montreal talents are bringing their own homegrown vibrancy to the stages. In this year’s edition of Jazz Fest, many local jazz groups are scheduled to play major sets, showcasing Montreal’s robust jazz culture to festival attendees. Below, I chose to highlight one official McGill ensemble, one McGill student-led group, and one faculty-led group, all of which are performing sets you definitely will not want to miss:

The McGill Jazz Orchestra 1: June 26, 5:00 pm, Rio Tinto Stage (Free)

The McGill Jazz Orchestra 1 is an ensemble made up of talented students from the Schulich School of Music at McGill University. They will play a large outdoor set at Jazz Fest, free of charge. Incidentally, this is not the orchestra’s first major gig. Every year, the Jazz Orchestra plays an array of shows throughout the city at different venues, with members of the orchestra leading bands that perform regularly at jazz clubs across Montreal. 

The ensemble is directed by acclaimed Canadian pianist and composer Marianne Trudel, who has performed extensively with l’Orchestre National de Jazz de Montréal, and with major names such as Chucho Valdés, Kenny Wheeler, and Ingrid Jensen. Trudel also composes an extensive contemporary repertoire for the McGill Jazz Orchestra 1, giving the 18-piece group a unique sound that will undoubtedly capture listeners’ attention.

Professor Trudel told The Daily that audiences at the Jazz Orchestra’s upcoming Jazz Fest set can expect “a broad spectrum of styles, energies, and colours” spanning “really early on in big band music to nowadays.” Trudel highlighted the importance of audience participation and the vibrant festival atmosphere in bringing out the best in performers. “I’ve been presenting concerts with the McGill Jazz Orchestra 1 at the Montreal Jazz Fest for a few years now, and every time, I can see that the students are really motivated to play in the largest jazz festival in the world . . . it gets them in a mindset where they play super well.”

Najib Fenaoui: July 4, 6:00 pm, Le Studio TD (Free)

Najib Fenaoui is a McGill student and vocalist who will lead his ensemble, Najib and the Alter Egos, in a free set taking place at Le Studio TD. Fenaoui has a diverse range of musical influences, from Ella Fitzgerald to Bobby McFerrin, and this versatility is clearly expressed through his witty, darting, lyrical phrasing, bringing unmistakable personality to jazz standards.

Fenaoui was the recipient of this year’s Oliver-Jones Prize, which rewards university-level musicians of visible minorities who show extensive musical promise and talent. The reward was created in honour of local legend Oliver Jones, a pianist who traversed local clubs in his home neighbourhood of Little Burgundy to major international stages and festivals. Fenaoui’s reception of the prize comes with the opportunity to perform at the renowned Jazz Fest. “I’m honoured,” Fenaoui tells The Daily regarding winning the esteemed prize. “It’s like a stamp of approval from people that have been doing this for much longer than I have. It’s nice to be recognized by my mentors.” 

Fenaoui sees his first performance as a bandleader in the Jazz Fest as a means to introduce himself to a new, broader audience. For this reason, he is seeking to represent a wide variety of artistic themes in his set. 

“People should expect to see a lot of variety in both vocals and styles, but all within the jazz idiom. Bossa Nova, Blues, swing, Ballads, some Soul and R&B. People should expect to hear my voice explore all of these different styles in a comfortable way. I feel at home in these styles of music and try to blend all of them the best I can.” 

Camille Thurman with the Darrell Green Quartet: June 27, 7:00 pm, Upstairs Jazz Bar & Grill (Paid)

Camille Thurman and Darrell Green are perfect examples of the excellence of the Schulich School of Music jazz faculty. Together, they lead the Downbeat Award-winning McGill Jazz Conglomerate, an ensemble featuring McGill vocalists. They also teach several classes at McGill and serve as indispensable mentors to students in the program. Both are widely considered first-call members of both the New York and Montreal jazz scenes. The two star musicians lead the award-winning group, Camille Thurman with the Darrell Green Quartet, which tours regularly both within North America and beyond.

Camille Thurman is not a performer you want to miss. Known for her rich and dark tone, blisteringly accurate phrasing on the saxophone, as well as her virtuosic abilities as a vocalist, Thurman has built a rich career for herself in the jazz scene. She has played extensively with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis and was a featured soloist in the ensemble’s 2021 tribute to John Coltrane’s magnum opus, A Love Supreme. She has also performed alongside numerous greats, including George Coleman, Chaka Khan, and Erykah Badu.

Darrell Green is a dynamic and forceful drummer who joined the Schulich School of Music Jazz faculty in 2021 alongside Professor Thurman. Professor Green is known for his deep musicianship, extensive experience, and technical expertise. 

For this performance, Thurman and Green will be joined by bassist Paul Beaudry, pianist Yago Vazquez, and trumpeter Greg Glassman. There is no doubt that this all-star ensemble will be in prime form and ready to swing.

Their quintet set will take place at Upstairs Jazz Club, with a cozy, intimate atmosphere that will highlight the ensemble’s nuance and artistic breadth. While this show costs $40 (and a food/drink purchase is required), listeners will not leave the club disappointed.

The musical endeavours highlighted above are far and away exceptional even by the already high standards of the Jazz Festival. Whether or not they’re from McGill, audiences can expect to have a blast witnessing the talent and musicianship being nurtured in our very own Schulich School of Music.

For a complete list of Jazz Fest sets led by current Schulich School of Music students or faculty:

Mafuba (Opening for The Bad Plus): June 26, 9 pm, Théâtre Jean-Duceppe (Paid)

Jean-Michel Pilc Trio: June 28, 6 pm, Le Studio TD (Free)

Ranee Lee: July 2, 7 and 9:30 pm, Upstairs Jazz Bar & Grill (Paid)

Doxas Brothers: June 25, 6 pm, Le Studio TD (Free)

Lex French “Sketches of Miles” 100 ans: June 25, 9:30 pm, Diese Onze Jazz Club (Paid)

Al McLean Quartet Coltrane 100ans: June 27, 9:30 pm, Diese Onze Jazz Club (Paid)

Marianne Trudel Trio: July 4, 9:30 pm, Diese Onze Jazz Club (Paid)

The post The McGill Community takes on the Montreal International Jazz Festival appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Over coffee and eggs Benedict, Stephen-Ong, currently running for the position of Borough Councilor of the Jeanne-Mance District (spanning from McGill campus to Parc La Fontaine) in Montreal’s municipal elections, to be held on November 2, speaks to the Daily about his hopes for the vitality and future of the Plateau-Mont-Royal.

His party, Transition Montreal (hereafter, Transition), announced its emergence in a press conference in mid-July 2025, along with an ambitious progressive agenda spanning social housing and Metro construction to safe streets and police reform. Since then, the party has gained significant momentum in the municipal polling, catapulted by their strong stance on key issues such as a steep wealth tax, divestment from genocide, and cost of living. According to Stephen-Ong, many of the party’s candidates are first-time political hopefuls, but provide a compelling story, and have experience in various vital sectors. Polling at eight per cent in early October, Transition still falls behind many other parties in popularity, but with 41 per cent of the voter base undecided, a run for the majority is not impossible.

Stephen-Ong didn’t start out with political ambitions. Growing up in Montreal, he followed the desires of his parents to McGill University, where he studied computer science. After university, he entered the job market in the late 1990s in the fervor of the early stages of the internet, finding work in the developing tech industry. However, the allure of large tech companies in the United States couldn’t pull him away from his city, and Stephen-Ong quickly fell in love with the Montreal music scene. Although he had played the saxophone since high school, witnessing a few “transformative” shows convinced Stephen-Ong to change courses, enrolling once again at McGill, this time in the Faculty of Music (now Schulich School of Music). He began playing gigs around the city, and eventually dropped out of McGill to pursue his professional saxophone career full-time. Stephen-Ong quickly made a name for himself in the Montreal scene both as a band leader and sideman, playing at myriad venues throughout the city. His turn towards politics in recent months comes, in part, from his desire to protect a music scene under threat.

While rising housing prices, and cost of living are central issues in municipal elections throughout Canada, there is another policy point that has risen to the surface in this election as a part of Transition’s campaign: nightlife. Much of the Transition team, in fact, are musicians with strong ties to the local nightlife sector. Stephen-Ong described how Craig Sauvé, the party’s mayoral nominee, is a heavy metal guitarist, and Sergio Da Silva, running for Borough Councilor of the Saint-Jacques district, is a musician and owner of the popular local venue Turbo Haus. This strong musical affiliation is not a coincidence. These figures have decided to join forces to take on the persistent deterioration of cultural fixtures throughout the city. 

“I have played at every venue that has closed in the past 12 years,” says Stephen-Ong. In fact, he explains that these experiences are what led him to politics in the first place. 

At around 11 pm one night in 2013, police interrupted a weekly performance Stephen-Ong was playing with his regular band, Kalmunity, at Les Bobards. A noise complaint had been called on the then-popular Saint-Laurent Boulevard bar, causing the police to arrive. The bar was faced with a $1,250 fine, an enormous and unsustainable amount for a small venue to pay. Even worse, they were told that the infractions would compound, making future police encounters exponentially more costly. After investing heavily in soundproofing in the following few years, Les Bobards, unable to reckon with the inevitable noise produced by live music, ended up closing its doors for good in 2015.

In recent years this has become all too common among Montreal’s cultural hubs. As CBC found at the time of Les Bobards’ closure, Stephen-Ong provided a similar autopsy after speaking with me in October of this year, highlighting the unwavering severity of this issue. He believes that the root causes of nightlife venue closures in Montreal are the gentrification of the Plateau, and the suffocating noise complaint laws throughout Montreal. 

Currently, when police respond to a noise complaint call, they are allowed to present the venue with a fine if they hear any noise whatsoever from the street, regardless of the volume. Closing their front doors on the night of a show for risk of noise complaints can rob these venues of valuable revenue and attention, which is often enabled by the curiosity of passers-by drawn in by the music. 

Stephen-Ong argues that gentrification of the Plateau neighbourhood exacerbates these issues, “If you rent an apartment and there’s a noisy bar next door and you’re [only] paying three hundred dollars in rent, who cares?” 

 However, as expensive condominiums pop up on these corridors known for nightlife, people begin to believe that the steep price tag should entitle them to silence at night, despite expecting the same vibrancy from the city that attracted them to it in the first place.

 “[When] people think ‘music venue,’ that’s like Place-des-Arts, the Bell Center,” says Stephen-Ong. “Yes, those are music venues, but so is Barfly, so is Grumpy’s, so is Turbo Haus.” It is these latter establishments that act as incubators for the local music scene.

After this police encounter in 2013, having had no prior experience or interest in politics, Stephen-Ong took to social media to voice his concerns about the state of the Plateau and the vitality of its night life. He didn’t realize the municipal election was the following week. This political climate helped his post go viral, and Stephen-Ong found himself doing interviews with major news networks such as CBC and CTV to draw attention to these issues, which had so far gone without notice in the media and public consciousness. Realizing the necessity and public support for legislative change, he began working with local policymakers, advocating for venues and cultural institutions, and slowly finding himself emerging into the political realm. Talking to venue owners across the city provided Stephen-Ong the resources and connections to kickstart his largest initiative which continues to this day: Le Cypher X. 

Le Cypher X is a weekly improvised music experience that incorporates some of the best musicians and rappers in the Montreal scene. Held every Thursday night in the live music venue O Patro Vys, with the comforting smell of weekly home-cooked catering, it is truly a one-of-a-kind event. Musicians of all kinds provide sonic support for a rotating cast of freestyle rappers — your favorite backing tracks brought to life. There, Stephen-Ong is front and center, giving cues to the band, outlining ornaments on his saxophone, and calling up visitors to the stage. The attitude of the event can be seen throughout Stephen-Ong’s political messaging: Politics, like Le Cypher X, is supposed to be an open and collaborative space; he wants to help make it that way.

Despite trusting his party’s mission, Stephen-Ong doesn’t believe in voting along party lines. “Do your own research,” he says. He believes that his policies, if heard for what they are rather than through reductive labels and buzzwords like ‘socialist’ and ‘communist,’ have the power to swing many self-proclaimed conservatives. Once in power, Stephen-Ong believes he will “100 per cent” be able to solve the nightlife crisis by establishing a night mayor and night council (in the case of Sauvé, Stephen-Ong’s fellow Transition party member winning the mayorship), bringing light to nightlife and safety issues that frequently go overlooked. Stephen-Ong intends to put forward Agent of Change legislation, where “planning policies and decisions should require new development to take into consideration existing businesses and community facilities, that will also be a priority for the party in managing the changing city fabric. Transition also aims to lower rent prices by building more social housing and establish electoral reform using ranked choice voting to ensure that the candidate that wins is a better reflection of the constituency. 

“I’m coming in with a lot of raw, unfiltered ideas of what’s wrong and how to fix it,” says Stephen-Ong, when asked about the strengths of being an outsider in politics. “This is a problem, we need to fix it, and this is how.”

Polling day for the Montreal municipal elections will be held on November 2. Don’t forget to vote!

The post Montreal’s Culture Scene is Under Threat: Transition has the Answer appeared first on The McGill Daily.