If you ever considered traveling to Montreal, then the best days of the year to visit are from June 26 to July 6 because of the mind blowing Jazz Festival which is indeed a celebration of summer.

This worldwide event offers over 500 free concerts in a quite a few scenarios in downtown,   from street Bleury to Place des Arts, which is closed to cars for the duration of the festival.  The scenes are well designed, have superior quality sound and lighting and everything the top of professional that you don’t see on free events anywhere else.    You can get also decent food and beer all over the place and meet people from all over the world.

But I have to warn you something: the place is packed.   At least two hundred thousand people may gather for the General Motors scene events at 9:30 every night, which usually features a variety of well known artists.    For instance on the 26^th they presented a tribute to Leonard Cohen, that great composer and charismatic singer from Montreal.   Figures such as Garou were of the talented party. And you couldn’t move an inch to your right or left without stomping into others.

This years’ events include representatives from Canada, the United States, the UK, Brasil, France, Sweden, Mexico, Germany, and others.

I wouldn’t be able to summarize the best artist invited as there are more than a hundred different groups and solo artists present during the festival and it would depend on everybody’s tastes, yet here some of the featured artists:

Martha Hig & Shaolin Temple defenders, The dynamites, Travis Sullivan’s Bjorkestra, Bran Van 3000, Mory Kante, Corkestra, Naturally 7, Les Moonlight Girls, Nate James, Orquesta Tipica Imperial.  

Personally, I didn’t like jazz until last year when I attended my first Montreal Jazz Festival, but ever since I recognized the great dimension and special feeling of Jazz and listen to it all the time at home.   Really nothing surpass Jazz when you want to relax in the bath tube or while cooking.  You should try if you haven’t.

Jazz is definitely the flavor in Montreal throughout the year.  This is a veritable artistic city, just as an example yesterday while in my painting tutoring my teacher told me that he used to be a neighbor of Leonard Cohen before he moved to New York and they used to have coffee in the park.     

The city also has its own stash of aspiring screenwriters, painters, singers, TV technicians and directors and I have met quite a few myself just by coincidence.  I feel Montreal is also a sort of mini Los Angeles/New York/Paris mélange in one.  So if you have a taste for arts I invite you to discover this beautiful old European style city this summer.