May 26, 2026 11:08 AM
Sonny Rollins Passes Away at 95
Sonny Rollins, the iconic saxophonist, composer and improviser whose career stretched from the origins of bebop to 21st…
The 20-piece ensemble Fanfare Pourpour, which began life as a guerilla street band in Montreal in the ’70s, performs at this year’s FIMAV.
(Photo: Martin Morissette)North America’s already lean avant-garde festival scene was even leaner in 2025, with the virtual absence of the venerable powerhouse Victoria festival in Quebec, a.k.a. Festival du Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville. Two years ago, for FIMAV’s grand 40th edition, new director Scott Thomson took over the reins from intrepid founding director Michel Levasseur. Last year, the festival went almost dark for a regrouping transition year, with only two concerts versus the usual 20-ish sets over a long weekend.
Victoriaville came back swinging and fully up to its artistically worthy tricks this May, with a prominent new logo — a many-colored, striped chevron pattern reminiscent of Kenneth Noland’s paintings — and new variations on the old festival theme. At the opening reception in the Le Carré 150 theater complex, Thomson addressed a sizable crowd and declared his mission to not only bring the festival back as it was before, “but also to change it in ways that we think is our beneficial for the organization in general, according to me, according to the board of directors, according to my staff, according to longtime festival attendees. That is to make the festival more accessible and to privilege intimate different kinds of contact between audiences and musicians.”
Thompson is stepping into some big shoes and a deep legacy, in this niche world of experimental, improvisational and variously avant-garde and genre-bounding progressive musics — jazz and beyond. This festival has been a vital stomping grounds for some of the icons of the avant-garde realm, including Cecil Taylor, Fred Frith, Anthony Braxton, Peter Brötzmann, Mike Patton, Evan Parker and John Zorn in a myriad of permutations. Zorn has been, in the past, a primary cheerleader of this gathering, which duly transforms a humble French-speaking city in the rustic dairy farm terrain between Montreal and Quebec City.
Echoes and documentary evidence of the festival remain in the form of Levasseur’s in-house Victo label, celebrating its 40th birthday this year. We were invited to head down into the Victo Records compound for a pop-up store/archive visit (fittingly, in a basement space suitable for “underground” independent label).
To open the festival, Brooklyn-based vocalist-composer and avowed “protest artist” Amirtha Kidambi’s Elder Ones fused genres and degrees of free and structured music, delivered with a fetching power and purpose, although her excessive between-song political rants — however right-minded in their leftist leaning — felt intrusive and patronizing.
Next up, Darius Jones’ superb trio (with drummer Gerald Cleaver and bassist Chris Lightcap in empathetic cahoots) helped wash away unsavory residue from Kidambi’s verbal polemics. I got a good taste of saxophonist-composer-project-maker Jones’ multi-dimensional artistry at the last two editions of the Monheim Trienniale in Germany, from solo to group improvisation to his own more structured projects. Jones’ residency-like presence at this year’s FIMAV only expanded that understanding, from his trio and his adventuresome, chamber-jazz-esque fLuXkit Vancouver (i̶t̶s suite but sacred) project, a clear festival highlight.
A key component in fLuXkit were the irrepressible violinist brothers Joshua and Jesse Zubot, rough-edged powerhouses who were also at the epicenter of the Josh Zubot Strings concert the night before. This was another strong focus point of the weekend, as Josh’s newly unveiled suite bristled with punkish, folkloric and contemporary classical manners, somehow cohering into a persuasive whole, far to the left of string ensemble conventions.
Canadian conceptualist John Oswald’s “Plunderphonics,” a pioneering and artful variation on the notion of the mash-up, might serve as an operative metaphor for the festival’s general concept at large. Oswald, who has previously appeared at the festival as a progressive jazz alto saxophonist, was in the spotlight this year with three late-night versions of his “PlunderphoniCoveralls” project.
Here, deconstructed slices of iconic vocal lines — by Michael Jackson, Billie Holiday, Willie Nelson, James Brown and others, removed from their original song settings and sent surreally afloat in a cappella form — form a basis around which a different set of improvisation-eager musicians from the festival were enlisted. At one point in “Sex Machine,” Oswald, perched in the back behind his command post, burst forth with a brief free blast of alto sax before passing the spotlight back to the highly responsive musicians up front.
As usual at this festival, the still vital field of free improvisation was well tended, and often by musicians of Quebecois and/or Canadian origin. Queen Mab — the duo of gifted pianist Marilyn Lerner and bass clarinetist Lori Freedman — mustered formidable musicality in celebration of 40 years together, while the young Montrealers violinist Adrianne Munden-Dixon and bassist Pablo Jimenez waved coloristic and expressionistic magic in the reverberant space of the Église Saint-Christophe church across town. Canadian saxophonist Yves Charuest also cooked up a sternum-rattling improvised storm with bassist John Edwards and drummer Mark Sanders.
Dynamo French saxophonist Sakina Abdou, who gave a memorable solo performance in the church last year, bedazzled in free trio mode with left-of-typical drummer Toma Gouband and pianist Marta Warelis, making up the trio Hammer, Roll and Leaf.
Unlike many previous years here, the predominant instrumental palette was acoustic in nature, one notable exception being the luminous Portuguese electric guitarist Rafael Toral. Although his guitar playing itself is fairly simple and melodic, with an early ’60s surf guitar tone on his Fender Jazzmaster, concept and elaboration rule. He brings a unique approach to ambient soundscapes and ethereal “stretched out” takes on standards (from his album Traveling Light). A gorgeous and dreamy harmonic sensibility is one of his strongest calling cards.
On the vintage acoustic instrument front, this festival boasted two encounters with a hurdy-gurdy. The duo known as Beast, with hurdy-gurdy player Ben Grossman and Katelyn Clark on the Medieval instrument called the organetto, played organic and mostly drone-oriented new music. Thicker textures and more structural variation came through with harpist Sarah Pagé’s engaging new work Voda, with the Montreal-based ensemble No Hay Banda. Grossman’s hurdy-gurdy mixed it up with Pagé’s harp, percussion, the proto-synthesizer instrument Ondes Martenot and arch vocals by guest Nika Stein.
In the margins of the primary festival action was the vibrant and ongoing sound installation festival, freely available in the town’s public spaces, and an experimental film component in the morning slot. This year’s film screening showcased “scratch” animation master Pierre Hebert, who worked with Ornette Coleman, Malcolm Goldstein and other contemporary music sources.
And on a bright Sunday afternoon in the park, an all-ages swarm gathered for the wondrous neo-Euro-Roma sounds of the 20-piece Fanfare Pourpour, which began life as a guerilla street band in Montreal in the ’70s and carries its legacy forward.
Another case of gaining broader perspective on an artist through more than one performance came with the double appearance of distinctive British pianist Pat Thomas. Pluralistic forces were at work in his fascinating solo set, in which feverish and dissonant right-hand wranglings contrasted with the pulse-keeping and grounded left hand. It felt as if each hand had a mind of its own, to mesmerizing and ritualistic ends.
Thomas returned the next night for one of the festival’s best attended and marquee events, the London-based group أحمد [Ahmed] serving up its Play Monk program. In effect, the Monk factor in question was the pointillistic classic “Evidence,” its head being the launch point for an hour-long, head-banger jazz wall-of-sound treatment. But it was a wall with countless nuances tucked into its cathartic ruckus, and a graceful finale. Could “Evidence” be this year’s FIMAV earworm?
Speaking of graceful finales, that intense musical blast effect was followed by the festival closer, guitarist/singer Eric Chenaux. His is an odd-coupling blend of deceptively breezy chill R&B songs — with curveball chord changes — and a non sequitur style of nattering guitar riffs, discolored by ring modulation and other effects. It’s a beauty/beast persona that soothes and perplexes, by turns.
Chenaux’s pacific sound made for a soft, soothing landing spot for a festival with a full range of ideas and intensities. The FIMAV tradition continues. DB
Onstage, Rollins would move about restlessly, thrusting his tenor sax in the air as he blew.
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