A TRUE MONTREAL JAZZ TREASURE
Venerable Upstairs club will be buzzing during music festival again this summer
I don’t think a city should be allowed to call itself a city unless it has a jazz bar.
Somehow “city” and “jazz” work together. A jazz bar is where live music can be heard virtually every night of the year. In fact, in the case of Upstairs, a venerable downtown club, 364 nights of the year.
I don’t go there nearly as much as I want to, but somehow just knowing how much fine stuff is happening there comforts me tremendously. Live music is good for the soul — all live music and all souls.
Which is why I think we should be grateful for the presence of Upstairs, which is actually in a semi-basement. Located on the lower rung of Mackay St. between Ste-Catherine St. and René Lévesque Blvd., it’s the street that gets forgotten or ignored by the Euro-trashier elements of Crescent St.
Upstairs was founded in 1995 by Joel Giberovitch. Some 22 years later, it’s probably his voice you hear when you call to make a reservation. It is also quite probably him checking your reservation at the door and leading you to a cramped table in a room perfectly lit for what the place exists to serve. I don’t mean to suggest it’s uncomfortable. It’s intimate, and that intimacy makes the music all the more affecting and up-close-and-personal, even when it wails.
I have not seen Giberovitch make the french fries people say are so great or roll up minced beef like a snowball for another trademark special, the burger, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he did. When I hear the words “Yukon Gold” and think about a jazz bar, my mind goes immediately to marijuana, or “reefer,” as they would have said in earlier times. But at Upstairs, it’s the kind of potato they use for the french fries.
For a guy who studied political science at Concordia and now works within listening distance of the place, well, you can’t say he has come a long way physically, but artistically he has crossed mountains.
Different musicians every night. Sometimes a cover charge, sometimes not. Always one show, sometimes two. That is a lot of time on the phone booking so many acts. Fortunately, unlike their rock counterparts, jazz musicians rarely ask for all the brown M&M’s to be removed from their dressing rooms.
Nobody has more respect for the music and the musicians than Giberovitch. In a feature article published in this newspaper in 2011, he told the great music writer Juan Rodriguez: “Behind the bar, when the music’s going on, we don’t shake our martinis, we stir them.”
So what if Bond doesn’t show up. Better still, I bet the new Bond (Idris Elba is my choice) will want his martini stirred and no one will notice he is even there.
One might think that business at a jazz club would be slow during a jazz festival of the importance of ours, but it is just the opposite. The place is buzzing. It becomes part of the festival, a place not only to hear but to gather. And there is always the possibility of a surprise or two.
This year will see Upstairs host two shows a night during the festival, which takes place June 28 through July 8. It’s a strong lineup that includes pianist Vijay Iyer all by his lonesome, with nothing to keep him company but his $625,000 MacArthur “genius” fellowship from 2013. Mamas, do let your babies grow up to be jazzmen. And jazzwomen. The enchanting Ranee Lee will also be there, celebrating her life in Montreal. There is so much velvet in that voice I can’t imagine anyone wanting to order a Baileys while listening to her. It would seem like overkill, but that might just be me.
Want to feel hip? The eminent saxophonist Cannonball Adderley said, “Hipness is not a state of mind, it’s a fact of life.”
Upstairs is a very pleasant fact of Montreal life. Upstairs Jazz Bar and Grill is at 1254 Mackay St.; for more information, see upstairsjazz.com. Vijay Iyer performs Sunday, July 2, at 7 and 9:45 p.m.; Ranee Lee plays Saturday, July 8, at 7 and 9:45 p.m.
There is so much velvet in that voice I can’t imagine anyone wanting to order a Baileys while listening to her.