Basia Bulat’s Montreal Jazz Festival Show Comes With Strings

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Basia Bulat’s concert at the Montreal International Jazz Festival on Friday may be the only time fans here get to see the Montreal-based singer-songwriter perform songs from her latest album, The Garden, with a string quartet. The album, which was released in February, features Bulat reinterpreting songs from her five previous studio collections of folk-flavored roots pop, with a group of string players.

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When she takes the stage at the Théâtre Maisonneuve, there will be eight musicians, including herself.

“This is the first time we’ve done the songs together with the string quartet and a band, like a super band,” Bulat said from Prince Edward Island, where she was vacationing with her husband and 15-month-old daughter. . “This group was formed especially for the jazz festival. I am very excited about that. It’s going to be special.”

The Garden was recorded in Montreal in November and December 2020, with Bulat and Mark Lawson (who has worked with Arcade Fire and Beirut) producing and featuring string arrangements by Owen Pallett, Paul Frith and Zou Zou Robidoux. Bulat says that the string quartet’s album was a unique opportunity to revisit the songs he had written years before. The format was two violins, cello and viola, and they added bass, guitar and piano on a couple of tracks. But mostly it’s just strings and his distinctive voice.

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“It was interesting because I had been doing some shows with a string quartet and I was thinking, ‘This is really cool,’” Bulat said. “It’s like painters making studies of the same thing over and over again. I’ve listened to Willie Nelson a lot, and he’s a true reinterpreter. And I found this LP of his, I felt like he had fallen through the cracks of time and space, and he was remaking some of his own songs, and other songs that I had heard him do different versions of. He is a great performer. Dolly Parton is too. Many jazz artists do that too. And because I was going through so many transitions, it seemed like the perfect time to do it.

“When I’m writing a song, I feel like I’m in control of everything and it’s final. That’s why I named this album after the song The Garden. I love the idea that these songs have different stages and seasons, like you can nurture a song and it will have different kinds of flowers at different times and seasons. Some of this is out of your control. I was much younger when I wrote I Was a Daughter. I sing it and it has a different meaning now, many years later, now that I have my own daughter.

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“I remember reading an interview with Lou Reed and he said he had no idea what his songs were about. The journalist was interpreting that he was just being difficult, but with me in that position, we think we know everything about our songs, but they always reveal something new over time.”

Bulat, a native of Etobicoke, Ontario, moved to Montreal in 2014 and quickly fell in love with her new hometown.

“I always feel overwhelmed by everything the city has done for me,” she said.

He decided to move because, “one, I was heartbroken and Montreal is a great place to get over a broken heart. Two, I had already made a lot of music here and it seemed silly not to pursue or at least follow where my inspiration kept being fulfilled. The city brings me so many songs. I have written so many songs here. It was just intuition.

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“Something resonates very well here when I am walking the streets. I have a good feeling. There’s the Mile End and the parks and the canal and the mountain. There is no sound of Montreal, but there is a spirit. There is a bravery. I feel like Montreal is always putting pressure on him. I’m always inspired by that. I walk into a show anywhere in the city and I’m inspired by the people who play.”

TAKE A LOOK

basia bulat will be presented on Friday, July 8 at 8:00 p.m. at the Théâtre Maisonneuve de la Place des Arts, in a double program with Serpentwithfeet, within the framework of the Montreal International Jazz Festival. For more information, see montrealjazzfest.com.

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