Feist kicks off Ottawa Jazz Festival with poignant land acknowledgment and an engaging concert

“I’d like to sing with gratitude that I get to live my life here while also listening and learning to the wisdom of the people that were here long before me.”

Published Jun 24, 2023 • Last updated 4 hours ago • 3 minute read

On a perfect summer evening marking the start of the 2023 Ottawa Jazz Festival, Feist cast ahead to her summer schedule of festivals, saying the Ottawa crowd had set a bar other events would have a hard time matching. Photo by Mike Laviolette, Ottawa Jazz Festival /Handout

Feist kicked off the 2023 edition of the Ottawa Jazz Festival in Confederation Park on Friday with a poignant and timely reminder that the grass beneath our portable camp chairs is part of the Algonquin Nation’s unceded territory.

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Before getting into the music, the artist born Leslie Feist took a moment to deliver a thoughtful land acknowledgement, saying the message was inspired during a previous visit to Ottawa for a series of National Arts Centre concerts, when the artist and her daughter spent a week getting to know the city. Members of the Algonquin community gave her the idea, she said.

“As a guest of this place, I’m continuing to understand that it’s my responsibility to recognize and respect treaty relationships,” Feist said. “I’d like to sing with gratitude that I get to live my life here while also listening and learning to the wisdom of the people that were here long before me.”

As she spoke, her feet planted on the ground in front of the stage, the official tour videographer, Cody Richardson, captured random images of grass, chairs and people around her, feeding a real-time livestream to the big video screen beside the stage that lasted through the show (and also included images of the action on stage).

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The music unfurled with the bell-like tones of I Took All of My Rings Off, a song from her recently released album, Multitudes. It was the first of several tracks from the album, the new songs enriching the set with inventive arrangements, fitting nicely alongside back-catalogue favourites such as Mushaboom, My Moon My Man and, of course, her breakthrough hit, 1-2-3-4, played as the final encore.

Between songs, Feist emanated a genuine warmth. She remarked on the perfect summer evening and cast ahead to her summer schedule of festivals, that the Ottawa crowd had set a bar other events would have a hard time matching.

Indeed. There was a certain magic in the air, a sense created in part by the all-encompassing effect of the surround-sound system that circled the concert bowl, immersing us in the power of Feist’s crystalline voice, lilting melodies and robust guitar work, not to mention the multi-layered backing of her top-notch band that occasionally nudged into jazziness. Capped off by the mood-enhancing lighting design, it was a wonderful concert.

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The jazz-fest fun continued under the tent of the OLG Stage on the plaza at Ottawa City Hall. In that sweat-inducing space, Brooklyn’s NYChillharmonic constructed a massive sound from the huge mass of instruments and players packed on the stage.

With a penchant for anthemic, riffing strings, the 18-piece ensemble leaned more to the prog-rock end of the spectrum, rather than big-band, creating a groove so heavy it was a challenge to contain it in a mere tent. Crowd-surfing would not have been inappropriate.

Leader of the band is singer-keyboardist Sara McDonald, who also writes much of their material. Her songs touched on the usual singer-songwriter topics of life and love, but were made magnificently intense by extra layers of orchestration.

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The festival continues until June 30, with shows at Confederation Park, Marion Dewar Plaza and the National Arts Centre. Saturday’s program was to feature folk-rock headliners Lord Huron on the main stage at 8:30 p.m. and psych-rockers TEKE:TEKE in the OLG tent at 10:30 p.m.

On Sunday, Indigenous singer-songwriter William Prince is the evening’s headliner on the main stage, while Cuban sensations Pedrito Martinez Group hold down the late-night slot in the tent.

For more information, go to ottawajazzfestival.com.

lsaxberg@postmedia.com