The Ottawa weather hasn’t really been spoiling the Jazz Fest crowd this year, having had thunder, lightning and pouring rain almost every night, but even tonight some faithful festival goers brought out their lawn chairs and party hats and headed to the City Hall’s Tartan Home Stage and Confederation Park’s TekSavvy Main Stage for some live music.
Guaranteed to lighten up the gloomy evening, was Ottawa’s PepTides, who never fail to put on an entertaining show of soulful singing, choreographed moves and outrageous outfits.
The PepTides at the Ottawa JazzFest by Renée Doiron
The PepTides combines hints of disco and soul mixed with funk and for their new material even some ska music with musical theatre, witty lyrics and stand up comedy. The gorgeous female singers’ DeeDee Butters, Rebecca Noelle and Olexandra Pruchnicky’s powerful voices are perfectly harmonious with their male counterparts Claude Marquis and Dale Waterman, and their five-man band just smoothly works together like a well oiled machine every time.
The PepTides at the Ottawa JazzFest by Renée Doiron
The Ottawa crowd was politely sitting down watching for the majority of the show with the exception of a handful brave fans on each side of the stage, which is really too bad since the band’s music is meant for polishing the dance floors.
The highlights of the PepTides show were the drummer Alexandre Wickham’s drum solo, and Rebecca Noelle and DeeDee Butters’ spectacular duets, which had goosebumps on my skin the whole time.
The PepTides at the Ottawa JazzFest by Renée Doiron
From the Tartan Stage, I moved right on time to the main stage to see the headliner of the night, Caravan Palace from Paris, France, who had clearly attracted quite a crowd of fans on the main lawn.
The band, which is currently on a North American tour, combines electro swing with a big band vibe, and is an interesting mix of a DJ and more traditional instruments.
Caravan Palace at the Ottawa Jazzfest by Renée Doiron
The singer Zoe Colotis’ delicate vocals are a beautiful match with the violin, piano and clarinet on top of the hypnotizing bass beat, and occasional scatting with the multitalented band member Hugues Payen.
The band brought the audience more subtle, dreamlike sounds like from a music box, for the early show, and built up more intense bass and house vibe as the show went on, ultimately turning into one of the biggest dance parties the Jazz Fest lawn has seen.
Caravan Palace at the Ottawa Jazzfest by Renée Doiron
If the audience was not already on board before, they got clearly excited when Caravan Palace did their own rendition of Lead Belly’s Black Betty, which surprisingly works amazingly well as an electro house version, and the vibe was bound to go even higher from there on.
By the end of the show, Colotis moved slowly from one side of the stage to the other, motioning all the people sitting in front of the stage to get up and dance, and to my amusement and surprise, succeeded in it perfectly as even the most seasoned Jazz Fest lawn chair folks got up and danced to the last tune of the band’s main set.
Caravan Palace at the Ottawa Jazzfest by Renée Doiron
The band returned for an encore with sound clips from old movies and 20’s swing tunes and sent the Jazz Fest audience home with a little skip in their step under their umbrellas.
Review by Laura Collins.
