06/27/2017
Are you Jazz lovers? Then book the tickets to Montreal and go there with your beautiful Russian wife. The International Festival of Jazz in Montreal is the most popular worldwide jazz festival, which has been held annually for more than 30 years. The festival is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the largest in the world. This famous festival is an important attraction of Montreal - the oldest of Canadian cities. Located on the banks of the St. Lawrence River, the beautifully restored old part of the city, which has preserved the French flavor of the 17th-19th centuries, with many restaurants and open cafes, has been turning into a single concert of the the most popular jazz bands in the world for several summer days every year and gather thousands of spectators and tourists. The jazz festival has long become a kind of locomotive in the economic development of Montreal: thanks to it, millions of dollars are poured into the city treasury every year. More than 2,000 musicians from 20 countries take part in the festival's concerts, and the number of amateurs who agree to listen to music on the streets even in the rain has exceeded 2 million people in recent years. Such a dizzying success Montreal Festival hardly dreamed of standing at the roots of this event, two young Canadian music lovers.
André Menard and Alain Simard arranged this simply out of boredom - they were looking for what to do in the summer. There was no one who would approve their undertaking or would simply support them. Friends tried to warn against failure, convincing them that the jazz festival in Canada is unlikely to become popular. Neither friends nor the government believed in the venture. When Alain Simard asked the federal authorities for financial assistance to organize the first festival, convincing officials that thousands of music lovers would gather at the jazz festival, they openly laughed at him. At the very first Montreal festival, which lasted only two days, there were only 12 thousand spectators. "We were just eaten by mosquitoes, but the audience did not break up, and we played," recalls the first festival of jazz musician Ray Daus.
Now the jazz festival in Montreal is considered to be one of the largest in the world among music festivals of all genres. It lasts about 10 days, and more than 500 concerts take place at the main 20 of its largest venues. More than two million jazz lovers from the United States, Europe, and Japan gather at festival shows, making the Montreal festival the most visited in the world. For three decades of its existence, the Montreal festival from a simple musical event has turned into a social phenomenon. It was the starting point for many musicians: it was in Montreal that the public discovered such names as Wynton Marsalis, Colin James ... From other similar festivals, Montreal, according to Opinion of critics, is distinguished by the fact that, being so grandiose, on the one hand, it continues to be very chambered, almost intimate, on the other.
Concerts can take place not only in huge open areas but also in cozy cafes and bars, almost in a family atmosphere. Another distinctive feature of the festival was its novelty and experiments - you can hear music that is not performed very often in North America. And this festival is a unique combination, consisting of magnificent music, beauty, and originality of Montreal itself with its restaurants and museums and a gentle summer that comes to the city together with jazz. Everyone who lives here knows that Montreal in winter and in summer is two big differences. In winter the city is waiting, and in summer it lives. During the festival days, you can wander around the city from morning till night, moving from one site to another, communicating with people who are always friendly and reserved even in a large crowd, and to receive great pleasure from it.
