The River Run Centre was built with the support of the three levels of government, and more than 1,400 companies, foundations and individuals. Poised on the banks of Guelph’s Speed River, near the spot where John Galt founded the town in 1827, the performing arts centre is Wellington County’s premier venue for ballet, theatre and concert music. The huge ceiling of its main hall rises four stories, and including its balcony level, the River Run can seat 785 people — very, very comfortably. The kind of seats so soft you could fall asleep in them, as I did a few times last Saturday night, I must admit. They employ nice, retired ladies who rip your ticket and help you find your seat, if you arrive after the house lights go down. In other words, it ain’t Sneaky Dee’s.

But last weekend, this highbrow setting was home to some of the most adventurous music programming in Canada. Sept. 3-7, 2008, the Guelph Jazz Festival celebrated its 15th anniversary. Under the artistic direction of Ajay Heble, the Guelph Fest has boldly championed improvisation and experimentation within what we know as “jazz,” as well as making the links with modern electronica and indie music. It is, in effect, everything that the bland smooth-music rub-down of Toronto’s Downtown Jazz is not. To us Torontonians, it is most amazing that such a risk-taking festival can thrive in such an unlikely place — a college town of just 100,000 people, located an hour and a quarter west of the Big Smoke. But community-minded, leftie-populated Guelph has become one of the most important music centres in Eastern Canada — superseding Ottawa as #4 after T.O., Montreal and Halifax, I’d say — thanks to festivals like Hillside and Guelph Jazz, a supportive and progressive music program at the U of G, and a true D.I.Y. underground of enthusiastic kids like the Kazoo! collective. (Check out their Kazoo! fest coming up Sept. 17-21.)

I made it down to Guelph to catch the mainstage concerts at the River Run on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon of the festival — missing out on reportedly incredible performances by the Instant Composers’ Pool, Friendly Rich, Vijay Iyer, and John Kameel Farah. I was a little disappointed that time constraints meant my first festival concert would be Tortoise, a band I’m definitely over-familiar with. I have in fact seen the Chicago quintet almost every time they’ve played Toronto since they debuted at the tiny Rivoli club — as part of what was then the du Maurier Jazz Festival —  in 1995. But this was the first time I’d seen them play a soft-seater, rather than a rock club, and I was curious to see how they’d translate — if the more tranquil, meditative aspects of their music would take over. Unfortunately, the more sedative aspects did — and this show confirmed some of my worst fears: that Tortoise are spinning in their shell a little bit. They haven’t released a new album in four years, and yet this is the second time in two years they’ve played in our area. Their recent material has sounded dispiritingly like “fusion,” and they haven’t put out anything truly vital since TNT — over a decade ago. I’d argue that their first three albums were some of the best music of the ‘90s, brilliantly linking the indie/math-rock Chicago sound with Steve Reich’s minimalism, Jamaican dub, krautrock, electronica and, yes, jazz. They’re under-rated composers, too, and the strength of their early material is its bold, memorable melodic lines. I believe that Saturday’s sleepy set may have had to do with the venue — despite fabulous, monumental acoustics, the band was too removed from the audience, and I’ve heard they didn’t enjoy the experience. I also heard that the previous night, Friday, at the Mod Club in Toronto, they were completely on fire — sweating and pummeling out the jams for over two hours. I’m encouraged to hear that the “slow moving land turtle” hasn’t yet come to as standstill. It’s also interesting to hear that as far beyond — or, hey, “post” — their rock roots they might be, it’s in a rock club that Tortoise still feel most at home.

The next day, Sunday, was Zorn Day at Guelph Jazz. I didn’t get up in time for the 10:30am Improvisations concert, instead meeting friends for the awesome “Annika” breakfast at the Vienna Restaurant — scrambled eggs on an English muffin, bacon strips and chocolate chip pancakes —okay?! All reports made me regret my sloth. Apparently they were smoking right from the downbeat. The afternoon concert was back at the River Run, a John Zorn double bill of two very different projects of his, The Dreamers and Electric Masada. I must admit I’ve never been a John Zorn acolyte (Zornolyte?), and I’ve always been a bigger fan of the culture around him — Tzadik Records, his New York venues Tonic (R.I.P.) and the Stone — than his work as a composer and saxophonist. This concert, however, was incredibly enjoyable, and one of the most amazing things about it was that its two radically different halves featured almost exactly the same group of very talented players. The Dreamers featured Cyro Baptista (percussion), Joey Baron (drums), Trevor Dunn (electric bass), Marc Ribot (guitar), Jamie Saft (keys) and Kenny Wollesen (vibes), with Zorn “conducting.” This was Zorn-the-composer at work, and his pieces for this project all have a surprisingly pretty, “cinematic” feel. I loved those that had a summery surf-rock feel, though sometimes Ribot and Dunn’s stadium-indulgent solos took it into tacky territory. The highlight for me was the fun-lovin’ tag-team of perma-grinning drummer Baron and prankster/percussionist Baptista. The duo was proof of the “if you watch someone having fun, you’ll have fun too” theorem. The same was even true of Zorn, who pretty much just sat there rocking out to his own music — and as indulgent as that is, you can’t fault him for it.

Now if the Dreamers lulled us into submission, then Electric Masada took advantage of our servitude to melt our faces off — with high-octane, blisteringly intense, semi-controlled chaos. Zorn was up on his feet, periodically blowing into his sax, then contorting his whole body to give the band directions. It was indeed the same group of players, albeit with the addition of Ikue Mori (once of original no wavers DNA) on electronics and the move of Wollesen to the second kit. There was the sense that the entire hour-long performance was one long, oscillating explosion of musicality, and Carl Wilson summed it up best on Zoilus: “most of all it was just the fluid, unforced power of all these musicians, making this collective music like they were sailing a boat out to sea.” Again, they seemed to be truly enjoying themselves, a welcome change from the aloofness of Tortoise the night before — though the Masadans’ relative maturity and comfort factor in a “jazz festival” soft-seat setting may explain that. They all came out to do the shoulder-hugging group bow thing for each of the day’s three encores, both seemingly bemused by the convention, and embracing it (no pun intended) at the same time.

Taking things back to Toronto — and back in time — I wanted to mention the Final Fantasy/Nico Muhly show from a few weeks back (Aug. 27 to be precise). This show took place at the Music Hall, the big soft-seater over on the Danforth (formerly a ‘20s vaudeville house, later a rep cinema), and provoked similar concern in me over how this intimate music would translate into such a large room. I’m a fan of the club environment, despite its drawbacks — chatty crowds, extraneous bar noise, tired feet, etc. — because it creates more opportunity for the audience to interact with the band and with each other. It’s less stiff, formal and sedate. Thankfully, both acts at this double bill helped recreate some rec-room intimacy simply by talking to the crowd in a casual yet respectful fashion.

The first act was the three-man “classical/soul revue” (as Craig Dunsmuir described it) of Nico Muhly, Doveman and Sam Amidon. I’m still having trouble trying to decide what to make of this collaboration. Despite lots of Internet hype, I still hadn’t heard any of their music, and so I was happy to go into a concert with fresh ears. Muhly is a pretty hardcore New Music composer/pianist (but of the laidback, under-30 variety), Amidon is sort of a “New Weird America” type folkie, and Doveman seems somewhere in between. For this tour, the trio took turns performing their own songs, with the others sometimes playing along, sometimes not —plus  a viola player and kit drummer joined in to expand the group. The beginning of the set was Amidon-heavy, and I must admit I wasn’t won over. His songwriting seemed middle-of-the-road and major chord-y, and his nasal voice reminded me unfortunately of Michael Stipe, or a more emotionless version of Bob Mould’s Workbook. But then Muhly took over, and laid down a stunning, effortless piece of intricate American minimalism on the grand piano — with additional phrase phasing from his laptop that added to the synapse-blowing factor. Heavy duty stuff. The final piece of the concert was the most interesting, a piece written by Muhly but sung by Amidon, based on a creepy folk song his parents sung to him as a kid. In many ways, the piece highlighted the divide more than the bridge between “folk” and “classical” traditions, as the second movement worked in two completely different tonalities at once, to near-stomach-churning effect. I don’t know what the academic crowd would make of the fact that he resolved it at the end — contemptuous sniffing, I imagine — but I left impressed with Muhly; he’s a “young composer” who draws on everything, and doesn’t make “new music” sound like an oxymoron.

After a long intermission, Owen Pallett came up on stage, and calmed down the anxious crowd — with a metronome. He came back out to rapturous applause moments later. This was Final Fantasy’s first local show since he performed at our Images Festival/Music Gallery fundraiser at the Great Hall back in April, which, though far from disastrous, was not his best — and it was not his fault either, as he was trying out a lot of new material while suffering through sound system problems and an acoustically unhappy room. (We’re sorry, Owen!) Happily, tonight at the Music Hall turned out to be one of the best gigs he’d played since the early days, and if I closed my eyes, I imagined I was back at Rancho Relaxo in 2004. But it was worth keeping them open for Stephanie Comilang’s overhead-projector visuals, which are getting consistently more incredible every time I see them. A highlight was the “live haircut” she gave to a drawn figure, and I was also impressed by the way she shone the projector onto the walls of the room, breaking down the fourth one in the process. Musically, Owen’s one-man-band formula is simple — Bach-inspired violin phrases looped and layered, with occasional string-tapping for rhythm, followed by the addition of arch vocals and sometimes keys — but the effect is still stirring and emotional. Though his set list was heavy on new material, as would be expected from this never-settling, forward-looking artist, Owen pleased the faithful crowd with now-little-heard “oldies” like 2005’s “The Ballad of Win and Regine.” Some of the new songs sound set to quickly graduate to “instant classic” status as well, though. You can check out “The Butcher” (the Final Fantasy national anthem?) from Spectrum, 14th Century over at Stereogum, while “Horsetail Feathers,” from Owen’s collection of Alex Lukashevsky/Deep Dark United covers (a reluctantly iconic Toronto songwriter) recently premiered on Zoilus. Spectrum, 14th Century will be released in physical form by Toronto’s own Blocks Recording Club on Sept. 30th. Go and buy it, and support one of this town’s favourite sons, before a 1200-odd capacity soft-seater isn’t big enough for him.

— Jonny Dovercourt