Live At The Montreal International Jazz Festival

Dominique Fils-Aime (fee-yay) is a singer and songwriter from Quebec equally adept at singing jazz, soul, gospel, blues, reggae, and pop. After taking the runner-up spot on The Voices 2015 season, she signed with Montreals Ensoul label and released Nameless, her debut, in 2018. With the exception of two standards, she wrote the album, revealing herself as a first-rate jazz singer and composer influenced by Nina Simone, Billie Holiday, Etta James, and Mahalia Jackson. In 2019 she returned with the self-composed Stay Tuned, and in 2021 followed with Three Little Words -- it included one of the greatest covers of Ben E. Kings "Stand by Me" cut on tape. In 2023 she released Our Roots Run Deep, composed of original songs. Live at the Montreal International Jazz Festival was recorded on June 29, 2024, with her longtime sextet and a seven-voice backing chorus. The sold-out concert took place between rainstorms. Her show was filled to capacity given her popularity at home, and she embraced the crowd with a concert that revisioned her discography. Each song is delivered with fresh vocal and instrumental improvisations, as Fils-Aime employs her full, four-octave vocal range; the band rises to the occasion by adding sophisticated charts crisscrossing jazz, soul, blues, funk, folk, gospel, and rock. Opener "My Mind at Ease" is a slow, swampy, imposing wah-wah guitar blues with a droning choir sending off an unwanted lover. That blues feel carries into a medley of "Birds" and "While We Wait." Theres a dubwise intensity in the bassline and trap kit as Fils-Aime broods and sweetly croons, quietly gathering tension and force. She breaks loose as Etienne Miousses guitar solo guides the band, switching to doo wop in "While We Wait." The vocal interplay with her chorus is canny. While "Mind Made Up" is a sweet, tender, sultry blues, "Grow Mama Grow" weds bluesy rock & roll and vintage R&B. "Tall Lion Grow" mixes funky jazz, gospel, and psychedelia and is followed by her 2021 hit single "Love Take Over," drenched in Afro-Cuban rhythms and Caribbean grooves. She also delivers medleys in the dreadwise reggae of "Big Man" paired with the haunted, ritualistic jazz-gospel of "Freedom." The sparse, dark piano-driven ballad "Fall and All" adds the thrumming kick drum to the organ; at the heart of the contemporary R&B jam "Old Love," it erupts into 21st century jazz fusion. The clever vocal interplay between singer and chorus is carried by a "lovers rock" reggae beat. "Joy River" is her own jazzed-up take on the gospel tune "Joy Like River," performed with the vocal authority of Dorothy Love-Coates. Closer "Our Roots Run Deep" combines blues, gospel, Caribbean, and West African sounds in a soaring rockist hymn of liberation. For fans, this is a live must-have best-of. For the rest, Live at the Montreal International Jazz Festival offers a startling and necessary introduction to Dominique Fils-Aime, a major vocal stylist, composer, and bandleader whose work and reputation are world class. ~ Thom Jurek