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How I Came to Know and Love Jay Clayton
It was an old friend – the great Heiner Stadler – who first opened my ears to the vocal ingenuity of Jay Clayton. I opened an enormous box Mr Stadler sent me from his home in Maryland. This was like discovering an archeological dig, in many ways like the first time I listened to Dean Benedetti’s monumental recordings of the soli of the legendary Charlie Parker. [So much hyperbole here but soon it came to find its way into common parlance – when considering Bird, or Monk – one of those magical recordings that I first knew as A Tribute to Monk and Bird* [Tomato Records, vinyl in 1978 and double CD in 1989] that popped right out of Heiner’s magical box… and then there were several recordings that featured the intrepid composer and vocalist, and rare human being, Jay Clayton.
Unbeknownst to Mr Stadler, I had come to know of Jay Clayton when I began to pursue my passion for the music of the first avant-garde of 1930. While immersed in my studies at Trinity College, I became besotted with writing poetry, soon discovering the poetry of Ezra Pound, thanks to my friend and mentor, Professor Adil Jussawalla. Every pursuit telescoped in a kind of enormous collision, the fallout of which resulted in shrapnel from language, spoken and sung – from Latin and French, German and English – notes that elevated melodies, consonants and vowels that gave wing to words and phrases… “The age demanded an image/Of its accelerated grimace …” Mr Pound exhorted in his poem Hugh Selwyn Mauberley.
It was then that I came upon recordings of Miss Clayton and her vocalastics that lifted musical notation off the page, pirouetting like spectral gymnopedie into the rarefied air ruffling the quietude of the room in a radical new language made up of mouthfuls of air in which whirled the consonants and vowels of her own Esperanto… Jump cut to several decades later and the opening of that magical box gave up its recordings as if – in the words of Pliny – they “choked me with gold”. Three of these that stand out even today – especially today – featured the voice of Jay Clayton. Two of those featured Miss Clayton singing works by John Cage – Four Walls [Tomato, 1979] and Three Constructions [Tomato, circa 1989?], featuring Miss Clayton on A Flower and Forever Sunsmell. The third was the truly magnificent vinyl All-Out [Anima Productions, 1980], the finale of which was the eponymously titled song.
Now, I grew up listening to chorales and cantatas behind the great pipe organ in the choir loft where my mother, a lustrous soprano, sang in Latin and English; and the arias sung by Maria Callas, Crista Ludwig, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. Mirella Freni, and Elisabeth Söderström or indeed like Ella Fitzgerald , Sarah Vaughan, Abbey Lincoln and many others. As I wrestled, following the lead of Ezra Pound, the incomparable literary giant in whose shadow I continued to write in search of the image that ‘the age demanded…”, I began to see parallels between the breathtaking melisma that the singing of sacred cantatas demanded and in the heart stopping coloratura of the very best operatic singers. Listening to how Miss Clayton, seemed to create new accentuation around groups of consonants and break down those that lived in the echo-chambers of known vowels… Then I understood that what I was listening to was something wholly new, and Miss Clayton was singing it, making a new vocal language.
In the song A Flower, from Three Constructions, for instance, I heard the skin of petals rising and falling gently as Miss Clayton found in this almost invisible – almost supranatural event – the almost aching rhythmic heartbeat of the flower in question. In doing so she had magically evoked the percussion colouring of the kind of balletic movements that Mr Cage had intended for this series of compositions he had envisaged for Merce Cunningham in the 1930s. In Forever and Sunsmell [from 26, one of 50 Poems [1940] by e.e. cummings Miss Clayton seems to inhabit a humming her voice into a windswept atmospheric whirl as she sings the poem’s lines: “wherelings whenlings/[daughters of ifbut offspring and hopefear/sons of unless and children of almost]…whose both/eyes/love/this now of the sky” How on earth could anyone not be seduced by the elliptical arcs of the vocalastics of this iconic voice.
The album Four Walls, which features Miss Clayton and pianist Richard Bunger was conceived as an hour-long dance play written for Mr Cage for Merce Cunningham and was based on Text for No. VII, a poem written by the latter. “Sweet love/my throat is gurgling…” she sings” This is one of those rare works which “…sets forth Cagean ideas about sound and silence, it also takes up the principles of repetition, gradual change, cyclical development and economy of means years before the minimalists appeared on the scene.” [from excellent booklet notes by Eric Salzman]. It is an enduring testament not only to Mr Stadler’s genius for casting on this rare disc Miss Clayton in the role of the spectral lover, but a reaffirmation of the absolute mastery of Miss Clayton’s vocalastic brilliance in ghosting her way – especially on the a capella vocal solo in Scene VII – through this dance play that, when premiered with Mr Cunningham, Patricia Birch [now a celebrated choreographer], Leora Dana and Julie Harris [both of whom are now famous actresses].
And then there is the album All Out, a quintessential work by Mr Stadler who called upon Miss Clayton to sing seven songs including Lonely Woman by Ornette Coleman, Random Mondays and 7/8 Thing written by Miss Clayton and, of course, All Out a composition by Mr Stadler, written expressly for Miss Clayton. Throughout the repertoire on this album Miss Clayton. This is prototypical Clayton-genius. She is luminous in a dark and forlorn way on Lonely Woman, radiant and stratospheric on Random Mondays, buoyant on 7/8 Thing and supremely seductive on All Out, where, with natural intelligence and sublime eloquence she caresses her way through words, syllables, and sounds from chest through throat…words and sounds finally given wings through Miss Clayton’s positively terpsichorean lips.
All of this was, of course, in addition to the constellations of stars whose work Miss Clayton also graced – Muhal Richard Abrams, Kirk Nurock, Paul McCandless, Steve Reich, Bennie Wallace, Dave Holland, Stanley Cowell, Rufus Reid and many others… not to mention many of her own solo works released on Sunnyside Records. Put together, this discography represents a staggering oeuvre that will take generations of adoring listeners time to dive into, to relive Miss Clayton’s celebrated life in music. But even that may only reveal a part of this rare gem of a human being… a gift from God to Planet Earth
Deo gratis…
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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