Montreal International Jazz Festival: a comforting evening with Ludovico Einaudi

< /p> UPDATE DAY

After offering a solo concert and another with his band over the weekend, the popular neo-classical Italian pianist Ludovico Einaudi presented Monday, on the occasion of the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal, his last show of the fortnight.

Arrived to the sound of falling drops of water, the composer sat down at the piano installed in the middle of the Wilfrid-Pelletier stage at Place des Arts around 7:45 p.m., in a discreet luminous vessel illuminating only a tiny part of his instrument. Nighttime images of a vast expanse of water shimmering with night scrolled in the background until they became projections in front of the stage, sometimes giving the impression of floating in it, sometimes of swimming in it below the surface.

After the first six pieces, played solo, the light gradually returned. The projections, this time chiaroscuro, all in motion, first gave a glimpse of a violinist and a cellist, then, when the transparent screen rose, a new member, with chimes and percussion, appeared. Six warm yellow spotlights circling the musicians then took over the lighting, before going out again, then back on for the last melodies.

Dressed in a casual black ensemble, Ludovico Einaudi humbly played the titles of his last complete album, Underwater, a rather calm and meditative project released in 2022. In the last part of the show, the pianist however also played several orphan musical pieces or pieces from opuses previous ones, including Fly, Walk, Fossilsand Luminous.

With a captivating and comforting sweetness, the simple melodic tunes of Einaudi, at once melancholy, felted and comfortable, seemed to carry the spectators, all ears, throughout the evening. The latter notably got up from their seats for a few moments to applaud the composer, while the latter, for his part, was quite silent, limiting his interactions with the public.

Playing with silences and bombast, his stripped down approach and contemplative ritornellos give a pop flavor to some of his most famous songs. The show on Monday evening made mention of it.

Revealed by the cinema thanks to its plots of Oscar-winning films, such as Nomadland and The Father< /em> as well as Intouchables, Ludovico Einaudi is today one of the most listened to classical artists on streaming platforms. The 60-year-old from Turin has accumulated impressive numbers for the titles Nuvole Bianche, published on Una Mattina in 2004, and Experience, released on In A Time Lapse in 2013 – more than 285 million for the first and more than 234 million for the second. He kept this signature piece for the end of the show.