What would happen if all this money was actually invested in the artists?

3) Michael Herring's Vertigo, Dark Materials (Romhog Records)

4) Jim McAuley, The Ultimate Frog (Drip Audio)

5) Dave Douglas & Brass Ecstasy, Spirit Moves (Greenleaf Music)

6) Paul Giallorenzo, Get in to Go Out (482 Music)

7) Gebhard Ullmann, Don't Touch My Music (NotTwo Records)

8) Darcy James Argue's Secret Society, Infernal Machines (New Amsterdam)

9) Henry Threadgill Zooid, This Brings Us To (Volume 1) (Pi Recordings)

10) Josh Berman, Old Idea (Delmark)

2009: THE YEAR OF FORGETTING WHERE WE COME FROM

Anyone who has passed through the eastern end of downtown Montreal recently has surely taken note of the construction taking place in and around Place des Arts. The Quartier des Spectacles is a $120-million project that will eventually comprise some 30 performance spaces with 28,000 seats, as well as art galleries and, apparently, centres for the exhibition and broadcast of "alternative culture." Alternative culture? As an integral part of a $120-million megaproject? Really? In fact, it's the smaller venues and independent music and arts promoters - and yes, the starving, hustling artists themselves - who are most responsible for Montreal's remarkable artistic vitality. The Arcade Fires and Godspeed You! Black Emperors of the world, to name just two bands emblematic of the Montreal scene, arose from the blood and guts and vision of fiercely independent and creative young people who owe nothing to corporations or government. As for the Quartier des Spectacles, a pile of brick and mortar downtown isn't going to create one more musical idea. In this context, I can't help but think of the decision by Équipe Spectra, organizers of the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal, one of the biggest beneficiaries of government arts funding and the Quartier des Spectacles initiative, to move the date of the 2010 edition of the festival up by a week, placing them in direct conflict with the smaller, independent festivals, the Suoni Per Il Popolo and the Off Festival de Jazz, which subsist on little or none of our tax money. Not content with being the biggest kid in the festival sandbox, Équipe Spectra appear to want to be the only one.
 
 

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