By coincidence, I came just in time for the opening of the 35th Festival International du Jazz de Montréal. From June 26th to July 6th, the city is buzzing. Two million visitors are expected, among them half a million tourists…

Hundreds of concerts will happen over the course of two weeks, and I can hardly manage to get through the official program, that has the size of my home town’s phone book. On thin paper.

I met up with Joel and walked down to the Village, the gay neighborhood of Montreal. They close down St. Catherine East for traffic during the summer, and the street is lined and filled with bars and small restaurants and great fast food joints.

It was filled with people… We walked over to the Place des Arts in the centre of Montréal, where a huge stage had been built for the opening of the festival. We still got some great places close to the stage and got us some beers.

The opening act was Woodkid. Never ever heard off. I imagined some jazz thingy.

But as the opening show is for free, I didn’t really care, you can only win, right?

What happened then was something unexpected… The Jazz Festival goes way beyond Jazz. Woodkid is a French guy, apparently quite known, that I had somehow missed on.

He makes alternative, electronic music, for the Jazz festival however, he went orchestral and had drummer, trumpets and a string quartet on stage, and it was still an amazing, electronic sound.

The crowd went pretty wild, there were lots of fans of him. I have to look up his album, I’m curious what the original recordings sound like.

After that, I slept in today, met Charles, another new friend from Montréal, and went for coffee in a great place called Le Café Falco.

They make great fair trade coffee that is brewed slowly in those new hip coffee destination machines. Slow food indeed, but yummy.

They also have a number of Japanese rice snacks, salads and bagels. And the Canadian press to read. My new favorite place.

Tonight, I’ll go see Herkules and love affair, another electronic band. But I could also go and see Katie Melua, Rufus Wrainwright, Dianne Reeves or roughly 30 other acts. And we are only talking about this Friday night. I’m blown away.

Next week Renato and Dennis will arrive from San Francisco, in tow their newborn kid, Declan, and we will be joined by our friend Lisa, also from SF, who drives up from NYC with her brother and his wife. I predict some serious partying.

I’m already deep into Montréal. Why on earth did it take me NINE years to come back here???