The refined elegance of Melody Gardot shone through the audience at the Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier des Place des Arts on Sunday night for her first concert at the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal.
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With her sunglasses on, she simply appeared on stage to sing a song for the occasion: You Won’t Forget Me. The premise of a terrific evening.
A solid orchestra accompanied Melody Gardot’s golden voice, which she wanted to present to the public from the start. We found there the great Philippe Powell on piano, Irwin Hall on saxophone and flute, Christopher Thomas on bass, Chuck Staab on drums, Jorge Bezerra on drums and a string ensemble of eleven musicians conducted by Jean-Michel Malouf.
His hit song “Love Song” swept the room, amplified by Irwin Hall’s saxophone, before continuing with the classic “C’est magnifique,” still as impactful as ever.
The strings then opened the opening bars of Our Love Is Easy, with Melody Gardot opening with her sublime voice. The timing was so perfect that the audience hanging on his every word didn’t realize the song was over. “That’s it,” she said before loud applause rang out.
Brazilian influences
After giving way to Philippe Powell, with whom she had just recorded a four-track EP, for an instrumental enhanced by the brilliant percussion of Jorge Bezerra, Melody Gardot returned to the stage to sing “This Foolish Heart Could.” Love You”, and continued there to duet with his pianist with Samba Em Prelúdio [Un jour sans toi], a song composed by Baden Powell, Philippe’s father, and Pierre Barouh. A real moment of grace.
The 38-year-old jazz grandee continued the evening with Coração vagabundo, her huge success Les étoiles, which was warmly applauded by the audience, From Paris With Love, and ended it at the piano with a song from her debut, My The Only Thrill .
Nice discovery
British Columbia native Mathew V opened the evening to entertain the audience with his juicy covers of big standards. Accompanied by a pianist, he immediately immersed himself in a cover of Ella Fitzgerald’s The Man I Love.
“I’m very fortunate to be in Montreal, one of my favorite cities in the world,” he added, before continuing with Anything Goes, which is also the title of his new album, which he’s launching with his soulful Voice reinterprets the great classics of American jazz and adds a queer twist.
Her rendition of Georgia On My Mind was great, with an original sensibility.
Since July 2nd was his birthday, the public spontaneously sang happy birthday to him. The singer is very talkative after each song, but also likeable and funny. Due to several rerouted flights due to thunderstorms the day before, the singer almost never came to the concert. In desperation, he was content to travel by night bus between Hamilton, Ontario and Montreal.
Finally, he interpreted with great sensitivity Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down) by Cher, which was notably taken over by Frank Sinatra before ending with the great Moon River.
Melody Gardot will perform in overtime at the Maison symphonique de Montréal on Monday 3 July at 7pm, with Laura Anglade and Sam Kirmayer in the first part.