Brent Hallenbeck, Free Press Staff Writer
There’s always a two-week breather between the intensity of the Burlington Discover Jazz Festival and the intensity-times-1,000 of one of the world’s largest music festivals just a couple of hours north of here.
The Festival International de Jazz de Montreal is different from Burlington’s 28-year-old offering not just in sheer size but also in tone: Aside from the world-music tent and a final-night performance by crossover star Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, this year’s local event was pretty much a jazz-purist’s ideal; Montreal, on the other hand, brings in big-name pop and rock stars to put some exclamation points on the remaining lineup of jazz stars, many of whom warrant exclamation points of their own.
The 32nd installment of the Montreal festival starts Friday with a pair of kickoff concerts by rock legends. Both are sold out, unfortunately, as are many of the performances by famous folks between Friday and the festival’s final day on the Fourth of July. But there are still plenty of promising shows you can get into, many of which are listed here and some of which are even free (all prices Canadian):
8 p.m., get a taste of the world-music group Freshlyground before its July 9 appearance at Higher Ground with a free outdoors show (also 8 and 10 p.m. Wednesday at Maisonneuve and Jeanne-Mance).
