Montreal – Art/Montreal – Jazz

That pretty much says it all. We hit the ground running yesterday with a tour of several commercial galleries in Veiux Montreal then made tracks to Home of Jazz where we had seats at the bar facing the trio and a fine dinner. The trio was piano, drums and bass. Darn didn’t note the names before they scrolled off the web site. Click here to see the interior. It is loaded with all kinds of jazz memorabilia and “stuff”.

Today we returned to the city driving to the Metro station on the south side of the St Lawrence where we are staying and taking the Metro into town to the Musee d’Arte Contemporary. They are having a special exhibition reflecting the 50th anniversary of Expo 67. Carol and I were fascinated as we spent an extended weekend in Montreal when the Expo was on. Unfortunately most of my memory is of being cold and very wet, will have to review our slides of that period when we are in Rochester. The art we saw was current reflections by artists who were not even alive in 1967. We spent a couple of hours there and were exhausted when we fin ished. Sat down for lunch n the cafe and reflected on our memories of the time, Yechiel was 1 and Dan was not yet a gleam. We must have left Yechiel, then Joel, with Carol’s parents. Anyhow we were drawn out of the museum to the streets where activities surrounding the 4 day fashion show were happening.

Enough of that and we caught the Metro to the locale of the Musee de Beaux Arts and walked there from the stop giving us an up close view of another part of town. We were there until closing and most of our time was spent on the floor with art from the 20th century and contemporary work. We started with the older work with less than an hour to go and literally ran through the top three floors.

By five we were on the street on our way to a Metro stop to catch a bus to Diese Onze a small basement club where Taiwanese-Canadian guitarist Denis Chang was mostly playing bass with a couple of guitarists. He learned that one of the patrons played bass so they switched up with her on bass and Dennis on guitar. By the middle of the second set there were five musicians on stage (there was barely room for the three) and the piano had been uncovered and the lid raised so it could be included. All in all a lively jam session broke out. We exited before the second show, otherwise I couldn’t be writing this.

Uber to the Metro station, Metro back under the river and a 25 minute drive back to the campground. Tomorrow we have tickets for a walking tour on Jewish History of the Old City leaving from the Jewish Museum where I am sure we will start our day.