ItalFest day one

A few weeks ago, in a local paper, my roomie mentioned that Frank Marino would play at ItalFest; Marino a local who was the lead guitar and singer of the band Mahogany Rush. It was a big deal and notable as Marino hadn't performed in 18 years and ItalFest found a way to pull him out of retirement.

So then I looked at the ItalFest site and found they have three nights of shows of different performers, so I decided I wouldn't attend only Marino's show, but as much as I can.

For ItalFest there are two stages on Boul St. Laurent, one facing north at St. Zotique and the other, bigger stage at Jean Talon facing south. The two stages enclose that part of boul St. Laurent to be pedestrian only and there were food and merchandise shops all along that enclosed space, mostly Italian based.

When I arrived, the small stage had a series of young Italian, or more likely Canadian-Italian, singers each singing one or two songs - these are the future singers given a chance to perform in front of a crowd. I didn't stay long as I wanted to explore the festival grounds and then return for the next performer.

Davide Bazzali is both a singer and a chef with his own restaurant just a block away from where this stage was. He sang what I would guess are traditional Italian songs that a few of the people around me who were older than me knew. Here he is:

This stage has a nice backdrop:

It looks like a church, and for sure had been a church at some point, but upon closer inspection I discovered that it had been converted to residential units. Anyhow, here is a short section of Bazzali performing:

They took about 12 minutes to clear off Bazzali and his accompanying piano player to then set up for the Jazz Kartel Big Band. On this small stage they managed to cram in about 20 people, it was crowded, but they made it work. They played some really good jazz songs with good rhythm and good brass playing.

That was the last show on this stage, so I made my way to the stage on the north end, and waited for the next show, which was Costanza, a woman who sings, apparently, in 6 or 7 languages. That night she sang songs in English, Italian and Spanish.

While they were undoing the stage for Costanza and preparing the stage for the next act I noticed that from behind the stage we were witnessing the sun set as viewed between the stage and the view that the nearby buildings allowed us:

The next band was Mimmo's Aftershow; they played heavy rock songs with a mix of original songs and covers.

In the last song this band played they invited Costanza to join them:

Once this Aftershow band wrapped up, the crowd around me got denser as more people came into the area for the Frank Marino show. He and his band came on and the first sound was him doing a two minute electric guitar solo and then the band kicked in behind him. He did sing in most of the songs, but also, spent a lot of time doing solo guitar work while his band played rhythm behind him.

I did not stay until the end of Marino's set as I have had a dry cough that started perhaps a week ago and it has not gone away. I can go for three or five hours without coughing once, and then suddenly it starts up again, so I managed to get through all of the previous shows, but during Marino's I started again; I didn't have water with me, so I ended up leaving after four songs.

There are three shows tonight, but there is also rain and thunderstorms that are forecast to happen at the same time as these shows. I will check the weather forecast up until the last minute before I need to leave to catch the first show at 18h, and if it looks to be okay, I will go.