Bell Orchestre Surprisingly Jazzy

Year after year, popular taste moves further away from traditional jazz music, and the Montreal International Jazz Festival has followed suit. The even more generic umbrella term of "world music" is the predominant style being represented here, and at least in terms of creation and backstory bears some resemblance to jazz music.

Montreal's Bell Orchestre put on a good show, and are generally a pretty interesting group, but they represent not only the complete antithesis of what jazz music was supposed to be, but embody the arterial blockage that caused jazz's irreparable heart attack in the first place.

So one can understand the inherent guilt felt enjoying the live violin and French horn-led seven-piece, starring Arcade Fire's Sarah Neufeld and Richard Reed Parry, along with Torngat's Pietro Amato.

One would think Bell Orchestre's swooning and sailing interpretation of chamber pop isn't all that far off from a modern era jazz group carefully reconstructing some laborious technical epic on-stage to the infinitesimal detail, but that's precisely the type of moribund state a generation of classically trained artists has reduced jazz to.

Eons ago, jazz was about the unexpected, unbridled passion — about musicians of divergent tastes carrying on a musical conversation anyone could understand. Today, jazz is about smug, overly-trained robots taking turns impressing themselves, with little regard for the dwindling and increasingly disinterested audiences below.

Jazz has gone from the party music of the proletariat to the grooveless bastion of the elites. Although Bell Orchestre are not guilty of the sins of popular music's recidivism, as products of Montreal's many fecund University music programs, their output both on stage and on record is very well-devised, immaculately textured and at times intellectually stimulating.

I'm thankful Bell Orchestre took the pop music route because in creating chamber music with a solid backbeat, they've actually conjured an interesting formula that plays much darker live than on record. Heaven help us had Bell Orchestre become a jazz septet.

The midnight show ended up being a lot more intimate than originally planned with the balcony cordoned off and the floor only half full. With Neufeld's violin and Amato's French horn front and centre on-stage, the two exchanged taking lead.

The set opened with a lot of uncomfortable feedback and no clear melodies, but not unlike some of the better moments on the recently released As Seen Through Windows the dense pieces take some time to wade through.

Mike Feuerstack's lap steel playing was also prominent and necessary in giving the pieces some much-needed jam. The biggest concern with a group like Bell Orchestre on-stage is they could become too lush and pastoral, so a gritty lap steel ominously reverberating in the background was a nice touch.

Another line Bell Orchestre was carefully straddling was the peak and valley nature of long instrumental compositions, where the climaxes are excessively loud and inelegant, while the quiet parts are reduced to irritating ambient noise. This is especially hazardous with a group like Bell Orchestre, who employ a drummer to deliver a pretty consistent backbeat so pop music consumers can still tap their toes.

The loud parts were too cacophonous to really deliver any emotional punch, but the group really succeeded in building up and working together to these apexes during the mid-tempo portions, so you weren't uncomfortably waiting for the long pieces to reach their thrilling conclusions.

The best moment of the show came when the saxophonist performed a jarring, film noir-inspired solo soaked in uncomfortable reverb and post-bop squelch notes. It sounded like Edward Hopper's Nighthawks come to life, and believe it or not, was about the jazziest thing I heard all festival.

Bell Orchestre may be better suited for a chamber music festival than a jazz one, but at very least proved they're not as emotionally devoid and rigid as so many of their well-trained counterparts.