Jazz Fest 2009: L'Astral: Concert Hall or Bar?

By Adam Kinner (07-06-2009)
L’Astral is the new venue of the Montreal International Jazz Festival's Maison du Festival. And I’ll agree with my fellow bloggers that it is a nice spot.
Not too big, not too small, nice sight lines, elegant interior—they did well. I’m especially happy about it’s size—small. I’ve long resigned myself to believe that I will never have a truly transcendent musical experience in a venue bigger than capacity five or six hundred. Call me xenophobic, but I like to see performers look bigger than ants and connect to an audience that doesn’t loom in a 2000-person darkness.

I compare the venue to Salle de Gesù in its size (Gesù has a capacity of around 400, to L’Astral’s 350). And the comparison works in most ways except one. At L’Astral you can order drinks, and at Gesù you have to wait till intermission.
The problem, then, with L’Astral is that it hasn’t quite decided if it’s a concert hall or a bar. At a bar you’re allowed to talk. But when you’re seeing music at a bar it’s usually quite loud—much louder than, for instance, Lionel Loueke’s trio concert at L’Astral last night. L’Astral, thankfully, doesn’t pump music into your belly, so that means people need to shut up during the sets.

I’ve no problem with drinking. Music and drinking are eternal bedfellows. But for godsakes a bass solo isn’t the time to decide what you’re going to see next. And the servers, although they’re a little better (and obviously trained), are taking their time to learn how to serve in such an atmosphere. My suggestion: people can order drinks before the show, not during.
The venue is still only six nights old, so I don’t want to be too hard on it. But when every show you go to features an amazing musician in duet with the laundry list of the guy sitting next to you, you begin to think the problem may be endemic.
http://communities.canada.com/montrealgazette/blogs/wordsandmusic/archive/2009/07/06/jazz-fest-2009-l-astral-concert-hall-or-bar.aspx