all things jazz...

Today was given over to moving slowly, playing arpeggios in every key between Eb and C on the bass (as well as on my digital piano, too!) and following up on various Jazz Festival details. I ordered Ray Brown's Bass Method and Ron Carter's Building Bass Lines books and we nailed down two additional shows for the Jazz Fest. It will be quite a party: 

+ On Friday the 26th, we see Bebel Gilberto

+ On Sunday the 28th, it is Bad Plus with Joshua Redman

+ On Tuesday the 30th, incomparable Wayne Shorter (at 81 years of age and still wild!)

+ On Thursday the 2nd, chanteuse Madeleine Peyroux

+ And on Saturday the 4th of July, my hero Ron Carter

Tomorrow is St John the Baptist Day - La Fête nationale du Québec - the Quebecois national holiday celebrating their origins and French heritage. Unlike the US, most commerce comes to a close on this holiday; rather like Thanksgiving in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. So a massive parade rolls by Mont Royale et St. Denis about 1 pm and we'll be there. Having grown up in Calvinist New England, I knew nothing about St. John the Baptist until serving our church in Tucson. (NOTE: I'm not a Mason either so I was really in the dark.) In the Southwest, San Juan Day marks the unofficial start of the monsoon - so water play and baptisms are all the rage. In time I came to love this festival as it honored the archetypal wild man who mentored Jesus in the wisdom of Mother Earth. As James Carroll notes, it is likely that Jesus spent up to 10 years with his "cousin" learning the ways of prayer, asceticism and the ways of the desert. Then, of course, Jesus discerned another way - the way of balance that honored the feast as well as the fast - and he parted company with the Baptist. I am eager to see how things shake out here. 

NOTE:  We took Lucie out for a later than usual "constitutional" and from a park just north of us a head-banger rock band is serenading our small community. I LOVE this place:  heavy metal in honor of St. John the Baptist! Although let me add this theological corrective: they have it backasswards:  Jesus was the party boy while John was all about the fast. Oh well, it is summer in Montreal and like people everywhere in the Northern Hemisphere know about Solstice time: the days start getting shorter so let's do some dancing in the street.

On Thursday it is off to the Outremont neighborhood - literally beyond the mountain - to the land of bagels, the curated Anglophone bookstore and the fictional home of Inspector Gamache.  And then... it is all things jazz!