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Gonzalo Rubalcaba: Duo and Trio
There has always been only one Gonzalo Rubalcaba, the Afro-Cuban pianist who left the island but whose heart resides there; an artist possessed of a genius for music characterized by a singularly restless creativity. But over a 35+ year-long journey in improvised music the pianism known for a virtuosic, powerful fists-of-fury – lightning fast with both hands – has given rise to a more erudite approach to the keyboard.
The nervy fingered pointillism is now often stretched by dreamily languid, long-limbed phrases and improvised melodic lines. Of course, even now, when the impulse to adorn melodicism with dazzling harmonics Mr Rubalcaba can turn on his afterburners and make his music ascend like vertically driven improvisations on the wings of a song.
Speaking of which, Mr Rubalcaba’s playing is infinitely more songful today, whether he is accompanying a vocalist [Aimée Nuviola is a prime example, or – in the instance of this duo with the French improvising alto saxophonist Perrick Pédron – you sense in the pianist’s playing a kind of vocal-conception], by which I mean he seems to launch melodies as if singing them. His piano remains an orchestral implement and the greater the interaction between his hands the more symphonic the sound he extracts from it.
But essentially, he seems to favour the kind of song-like approach, that is evocative of a singer involved in a glorious lieder performance. Through it all, Mr Rubalcaba maintains the same distinctive pianism that made him all the rage when Dizzy Gillespie [and Charlie Haden] first heard him in Havana and pulled out the stops to open the doors to world of music to his all-consuming musical genius.
These two recordings – one a duo with the French musician Perrick Pédron, and the other a trio recording with Mr Rubalcaba’s Trio D’été – with bassist Matt Brewer and drummer Eric Harland] are distinctive additions to his discography and benchmarks of pianism. Each, in its own way, confirms the explosive nature of the pianist’s genius, his meteoric rise in music.
Best of all, both recordings – with their astutely-selected repertoire – show how Mr Rubalcaba bends like a reed in a running stream, enabling music to flow through him, around him and from him into participating musicians, who feed off his genius to ascend greater heights along their own path as musicians.
Pierrick Pédron & Gonzalo Rubalcaba: Pédron/Rubalcaba The repertoire on this album is a judicious mix of familiar pieces – standards, if you will – and a couple of precious little rarities by familiar composers. The musicians appear to navigate the horizontal melodic lines in sine waves and parabolas that loop and bop and weave in and out of [the melodies] their harmonic patterns often sharply angled and occasionally swerving as if the linear motion of the music has been gently interrupted – guided, seductively by the bows and arches of French curves.
This may take the form of a divertimento prompted by a wiggle from Mr Pédron’s horn, seemingly on an infinite trance-like foray directed as if into the music’s vanishing point. Mr Rubalcaba, for his part will pick up a cue a listener might have all-but-missed and propelled the song – seemingly wrong-footed – into the rarified air, only to be joined by the saxophonist.
Together they bring the song back to earth via a glorious dénouement or a coda almost magically indistinguishable from its original melody. Cue the brilliantly impressionistic Lawns by Carla Bley, or Pretty Girl from the brushstrokes of Billy Strayhorn.
You’ll find yourself catching your breath as emotions run bright and high and dark and depth-defyingly low; and you’ll be bathed in warmth; the turn teary-eyed as these two fine musicians navigate this music, daringly nimble-fingered and with beautifully colours spreading magically on a musical canvas.
YouTube Video – Pédron Rubalcaba: Si tu vois ma mère
Music – 1: The Song is you; 2: Ezz-Thetic; 3: Lawns; 4: Si Vu vois ma mère; 5: Dreamsville; 6: Five will get you ten; 7: The folks that live on the hill; 8: Pretty girl.
Musicians – Perrick Pédron: alto saxophone; Gonzalo Rubalcaba: piano.
Released – 2023
Label – Gazebo [GAZ 217]
Runtime – 48:45
Gonzalo Rubalcaba & Trio D’été: Turning Point Once the boy wonder of the brave new world of Afro-Cuban pianism, Gonzalo Rubalcaba is now not yet 60 years old. Yet his music remains fresh, forever challenging you to make leaps of creative faith with him as he races along the musical continuum. Along the way he constantly butts heads with what are [considered to be] conformist ideas about how music in general should navigate the waves that continue to beat against the great walls that surround tradition.
Mr Rubalcaba has – from the very onset of his public performances – has always worshipped at the altar of originality. Moreover, as a musician Mr Rubalcaba’s music always seemed to suggest that “tradition” – whether created by artificial barriers of “jazz” or “Latin-Jazz” – was a wonderfully reality. But not understanding that the inner dynamic of tradition is always to innovate, is a prison. And so, his music has – should we say – been in conflict with age-old protocols of how piano music should sound.
And so, like all his music from the iconic Mi Gran Pasión [Connector/Timba, 1987], Giraldilla [Pimienta, 1990], Suite 4 Y 20 [Blue Note, 1993], Supernova [Blue Note, 2001] and even Straight Ahead [Yemaya, 2003]… right up to this recording – Turning Point – by actively throwing overboard melodic, structural and harmonic hooks that have been expressively blunted through overuse, he builds from what might – or might not – be left.
Every piece here is played with angular, yet languid ease by Mr Rubalcaba, Matt Brewer and Eric Harland. Through uncommon understanding of each other’s point of view, pianist, bassist, and drummer play with languid ease, each variation following the other quite inexorably, sumptuous colours and textures – indeed overall sound – has been brilliantly caught on this recording. The apogee may easily be divined as the two-part invention entitled Turning [Parts I and II respectively].
Deo gratis…
YouTube Playlist – Gonzalo Rubalcaba: Turning Point
Music – 1: Infantil; 2: Otra Mirada; 3: Turning I; 4: Iku; 5: Turning II; 6: Hard One; 7: Joy, Joie; 8: Pretty girl.
Musicians – Gonzalo Rubalcaba: piano; Matthew Brewer: contrabass; Eric Harland: drums.
Released – 2023
Label – 5 Passion Records [5P-080]
Runtime – 44:09
How one composer spent four decades forging a distinctly Québécois path through the experimental music landscape
When Joane Hétu picks up her alto saxophone, she claims territory. At sixty-six, the Montréal composer, vocalist, and saxophonist has spent forty years carving out space for experimental music in Québec, building institutions and communities that define the province’s musique actuelle scene.
Her latest recording, Elle a son mot à dire, captures Hétu leading Ensemble SuperMusique through thirteen of her compositions from across two decades. The album opens with “Elle n’a pas de mot” (She has no words)—a brief ambient piece that stacks wordless singing atop a chorus of “whirly tubes,” ribbed hoses spun above players that pirouette through the harmonic series. An apt introduction to an artist who has spent her career finding new ways to give voice to the unspoken.
Finding Her Voice in the Underground
Hétu’s path began in the early 1980s with avant-pop groups like Wondeur Brass, Justine, and Les Poules. These bands merged the pluralist ethos of New York’s downtown scene with European progressive sensibilities while maintaining something distinctly Québécois. “I was very young, in my twenties, and this fusion happened quite instinctively, without real premeditation,” she recalls. Through connections to figures like Zeena Parkins, Ikue Mori, and Fred Frith, and the Recommended Records network, these groups found their place in an international experimental music community.
Even while performing with these bands, Hétu was thinking beyond individual artistic expression. In 1980, she co-founded SuperMusique with Danielle Palardy Roger and Diane Labrosse. Eight years later, they organized a Festival of Innovative Women Musicians, devoted entirely to women’s groups working in avant-garde music—a radical curatorial gesture that signaled Hétu’s growing interest in building infrastructure alongside making music.
“We were connected to the New York scene,” Hétu explains, “but we wanted to create something here, something that would support the community we were building in Montréal.”
From Performance to Institution
The instinct to support that community would shape Hétu’s career as much as her compositions. By 1998, she had taken on co-direction of Ensemble SuperMusique, transforming the organization into one that explicitly welcomes “emerging artists, mid-career artists, and major figures alike.” Where many experimental music scenes fragment along generational lines, Hétu has consistently worked to bridge those gaps.
“This intergenerational cohabitation is a great richness for us,” she explains. “It opens perspectives, stimulates listening, and provokes essential exchanges.”
On Elle a son mot à dire, this collaborative philosophy becomes musical practice. In “Mot elle a,” vocalist Sarah Albu’s written part interweaves with improvised percussion, creating what Hétu calls “flexible, malleable” pieces that depend on interpretation. “For now, I only have one recording, but I hope it will live through other recordings and interpretations,” she says. “This is one of the objectives of open scores: to encourage multiple and living interpretations.”
[click on image to enlarge]
The Economics of Experiment
Running an experimental music organization led Hétu deeper into the infrastructure questions that determine which music gets heard and preserved. As founder and longtime president of DAME Records (Distribution Ambiances Magnétiques Etcetera), she took on the less glamorous work of documenting and distributing Canadian experimental music—a role she maintained for three decades.
“I’ve always had a passion for sound recording,” she reflects. “From 1985, I got involved in Ambiances Magnétiques, then DAME took over.” The work came with unexpected costs. “After my daughter’s birth in 1990, I was looking for a certain stability, knowing that tours would be more difficult. Naively, I believed that having a record label would offer a form of security. It was quite the opposite. This enterprise cost me a lot in creative time. Looking back, it’s perhaps what I regret most: having carried it for so long, for thirty-three years.”
Despite the personal sacrifice, DAME has documented a vital chapter in Canadian music history, providing a platform for artists like Jean Derome, Pierre-Yves Martel, Tim Brady, and dozens of others who might otherwise have remained unrecorded. “DAME documents this precious musical heritage and ensures that these musics are represented, supported, available, and that this artistic history is accessible,” Hétu explains.
Claiming Creative Territory
The questions of space and belonging that drove Hétu’s institutional work find their most direct artistic expression in her concept of territory. The idea runs through much of her work, most explicitly in her piece La femme territoire ou 21 fragments d’humus. For Hétu, territory encompasses everything from the intimate to the political: “the Earth, my room, Quebec, my soul—a woman who becomes vastitude.”
“In it, I take a position, as a woman, on my territory—intimate and collective,” she explains. “I doubted while writing it; I had trouble trusting myself. Today, I’m happy with the path traveled and with this work.”
The territorial thinking extends to her approach to voice and instrumentation. Hétu never formally learned to sing, drawing from influences like Tenko, Phil Minton, Jaap Blonk, and Paul Dutton. “I have a deep love for the voice and its noise-making potential. It’s visceral and fundamental to me,” she says. In her work with La chorale bruitiste JOKER, founded in 2012, she explores what collective vocal improvisation can accomplish using techniques like soundpainting.
[click on image to enlarge]
Seasons of Composition
Hétu’s relationship to place extends to her famous engagement with Québec’s harsh winters. Where others see obstacles to cultural life, she found creative catalysts. Her trilogy Musique d’hiver emerged from the practical reality that “January, February and March are rather quiet in the record industry, which leaves time to compose.” But the relationship between season and creativity runs deeper than scheduling.
“I love winter, I love the sound, the cocoon effect it produces,” she explains. The final piece in the trilogy, Récits de neige, focused specifically on snow’s geometry: “I hoped to compose 30 short pieces that musicians could amalgamate as they want, like snowflakes, which each have a different geometry.”
Building for the Future
Today, as Hétu approaches her fifth decade in music, she remains committed to the experimental principles that have guided her career while grappling with new challenges facing the experimental music community. “I believe the public has the capacity to welcome innovation,” she argues. “But it needs tools, which are becoming scarce: radio broadcasting, interviews, production support, and venues dedicated to new music.”
Her work with Ensemble SuperMusique continues to demonstrate that experimental music can build lasting institutions and communities. Recent projects include ongoing workshops in graphic scores and conducting gestures, international collaborations, and regular concert series that have sustained the musique actuelle community for decades.
“I respond to the call, to the impulse of the moment. I am still, fundamentally, the same composer,” Hétu admits. Viewed across four decades, her work reveals a consistent thread: the understanding that experimental music concerns itself with creating the conditions for a community of artists to flourish.
In an era when funding for experimental music remains precarious and cultural institutions focus on measurable outcomes, Hétu’s approach offers a different model. Her career demonstrates that sometimes the most radical act is creating space for other voices to emerge, building the infrastructure for artistic communities to sustain themselves across generations. After four decades, Joane Hétu still has something to say. She’s still creating spaces for others to find their own voices within the experimental music territory she has helped map. In Québec’s cultural landscape, that may be her most enduring composition.
“One of the most unforgettable moments of the Festival was the electrifying performance by Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue”
The Festival International de Jazz de Montréal took place from June 26 to July 5, 2025, in the Quartier des Spectacles. The 45th edition of the world’s largest jazz festival was a resounding success, attracting jazz enthusiasts from around the globe.
The Heart of the Festival
Located in the heart of downtown Montreal, the Festival site becomes a meeting place for jazz lovers worldwide for ten days. The area is closed to all vehicular traffic and remains open until midnight, allowing visitors to enjoy close to 150 indoor concerts and more than 350 free, open-air shows presented on the specially redesigned Quartier des Spectacles.
A Personal Journey
As a jazz fan and festival enthusiast, I had always intended to attend the Montreal Jazz Festival. Despite missing several chances, I finally managed to go this year, although for a shorter time than I would have preferred, from June 30th to July 3rd.
Arrival and First Impressions
I enjoyed a pleasant 5-hour Via Rail train trip from Toronto to Montreal, arriving around 2 PM. After settling into my Airbnb, I found the jazz festival site and met up with Danilo Navas, the editor-in-chief of That Canadian Magazine. We eagerly waited for the first act to perform on the TD Stage, a free concert by UK tenor saxophonist Nubya Garcia.
Garcia and her band delivered an energetic and incredibly enjoyable set that featured music from both of her recordings. This is an artist I will be watching more closely.
One of the most unforgettable moments of the festival was the electrifying performance by Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue. This mind-bending concert had everything thrown into the mix, creating an explosive fusion of world jazz, funk, and New Orleans soul.
The unbridled excitement and energy from the stage were infectious, drawing the audience in and making them an essential part of the show. The crowd danced, cheered, and grooved to the irresistible beats, unable to resist the magnetic pull of Trombone Shorty’s music.
After this exhilarating experience, the only thing left to do was find a chill spot to unwind and bask in the afterglow of this burst of New Orleans magic.
Canada Day Celebrations
On July 1st, Canada Day, I took a walk to Old Montreal to check out the celebrations. The area, reminiscent of Europe, was closed off to most traffic, allowing visitors to enjoy the numerous restaurants with patios and sidewalk cafes. I indulged in a coffee and biscotti at one inviting cafe before making my way back to the jazz festival area, with a brief stop in Chinatown for some delicious dumplings and soup.
Memorable Performances
This Canada Day was my most active in terms of concerts, with three free shows happening almost consecutively at outdoor venues.
The Sugar Darlings: Miche Love, a key figure in the Montreal blues scene, captivated the audience with her powerful and soulful voice, supported by the electrifying solos of Paul Lucyk on guitar and Kaven Jalbert on saxophone.
Julien Fillion Band: This lively quartet, led by the talented Julien Fillion on saxophone, guitar, and keyboards, delivered an energetic performance to a rain-soaked crowd. The show must go on despite the unpredictable weather challenges.
Endea Owens & the Cookout: Detroit-raised recording artist, bassist, and composer Endea Owens captivated the audience with her soulful singing and jazz and soul-infused playing.
My Last Full Day at the Festival
My last full day at the festival was spent exploring the grounds and soaking in the vibrant atmosphere of the Montreal Jazz Festival, discovering the many facets of this grand celebration.
Christine Jensen Quartet at Le Studio TD
One of the last jazz concerts I attended was at an indoor venue that offered a free performance by the Christine Jensen Quartet, which featured alto saxophonist Christine Jensen. This outstanding group of world-class musicians includes Jim Doxas on drums, Gary Versace on keys, and Adrian Vedady on contrabass. The quartet played tunes from Jensen’s latest recording, “Day Moon,” released in 2023, as well as selections from her other quartet albums.
A Memorable Experience
In summary, the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal is an excellent event held at a captivating venue, offering a wonderful experience with many free concerts and more. I look forward to returning and delving even further into the modern music of our era.
Editor’s Note: We will publish our photo gallery from the 45th Festival International de Jazz de Montréal in a separate post in the next few days.
Luminato at Harbourfront – June 15, 2025
Somd’agua: A Dance Migration Performance
A mesmerizing collaboration featuring Esie Mensah, Alex Oliver, Reimundo Sosa Reinoldes, and Adrianna Yanuziello, Somd’agua provided a profound exploration of Afro-Brazilian culture. The performance artfully depicted the sacred connection between the deities Oxum and Yemanjá through movement and rhythm.
The fusion of powerful singing, chanting, and dynamic Afro-Cuban and Afro-Brazilian percussion created an immersive backdrop for the dancers’ graceful movements.
As the river meets the sea, the performers wove their magic, creating a flowing exchange of energies that stirred deep emotions and evoked memories of distant lands.
The natural setting of Harbourfront Centre enhanced the experience, with the breeze from Lake Ontario and passing tall ships complementing the performance’s aquatic themes. The audience’s enthusiastic participation peaked during the climactic duet, where the dancers achieved perfect harmony.
Santé! By Cirque Kikasse
Quebec’s innovative circus troupe transformed a food truck into an extraordinary performance space.
Their show seamlessly blended fast-food preparation with spectacular acrobatics, showcasing remarkable athleticism and gravity-defying feats both on and above their unique mobile stage.
Musical Performances and Workshops
Afro-Indigenous roots of Colombia Cumbia workshop with Beny Esguerra
Beny Esguerra, the Juno-nominated multi-instrumentalist, delivered an engaging exploration of Afro-Colombian rhythms. Accompanied by his daughter, who acted as her father’s assistant. She helped distribute percussion instruments.
Esguerra created an interactive experience where the distributed percussion instruments became integral to the musical performance. It featured a fun and engaging demonstration that showcased the communicative power of drumming.
Kombilesa Mi
This vibrant Afro-Colombian ensemble brought the distinctive sounds of San Basilio de Palenque to life. Their dynamic performance merged traditional rhythms (Mapalé, Bullerengue, Son Palenquero) with contemporary hip-hop elements, performing in both Spanish and their native language, Palenque.
Formed in 2011, the group serves as a cultural bridge, connecting young people with their heritage while embracing modern musical expressions. The show was well-attended, and these fantastic entertainers had the crowd singing along, clapping in time, and seemingly having a joyful experience.
The festival experience concluded perfectly with an evening stroll along the Harbourfront paths. The day’s artistic celebrations settled into memory as night descended over Lake Ontario.
Photo Gallery: Adrianna Yunuziello Dance Migration performing Somd’agua
Photos by Paul J. Youngman [click on images to enlarge]
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