What's worth seeing at the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal?
The 46th edition for 2026 sports over 350 concerts, so taking a pick isn’t the easiest feat. You could consult the program guide, sure, but we thought it wiser to ask the experts, the locals who spend their days talking music with strangers and forming opinions strong enough to survive decades of genre arguments: Record shop owners and employees.
Montreal's independent record shops are, in their own way, a parallel curatorial institution to the festival itself. They're the places where the conversation never really stops. That’s why we asked six of them, from NDG and Little Italy to the Plateau and La Petite-Patrie, which shows they were planning to catch.
The answers range from a legendary British funk band making their long-awaited return to a masked duo from Saguenay who've spent the last few months breaking the internet.
The festival runs June 25 to July 4. Here's where these crate-diggers are gonna be (plus some recommended track here and now).
La Rama: KOKOROKO, June 26
La Rama has called Mile End home since 2018, when Kris Guilty moved his import 12-inch operation out of Death of Vinyl and into its own proper storefront. The shop is DJ-centric by instinct but deliberately wide-ranging in practice, stocking house, techno, disco, jazz, Latin, downtempo, and experimental alongside a section dedicated to local releases. It also runs an in-house label. Guilty's encyclopedic knowledge of global dance music scenes is the through-line, and the shop reflects it.
His pick is KOKOROKO, the London seven-piece playing the TD Stage on June 26 at 9:30 pm, free, on the same night as Cymande. Founded by Sheila Maurice-Grey and Onome Edgeworth, KOKOROKO built their reputation on a fusion of Afrobeat, jazz, and funk rooted in West African musical traditions, with their 2019 track "Abusey Junction" racking up tens of millions of views and winning Track of the Year at Gilles Peterson's Worldwide Awards. Their 2022 debut album Could We Be More landed on The Guardian's best jazz albums of the year list, and their 2025 follow-up Tuff Times Never Last cemented their standing as one of the most compelling live acts in contemporary jazz.
Their records have been consistent sellers at La Rama. "Their last two or three albums have been like huge hits at the shop," says Kris Guilty. "They're kind of at their peak right now in terms of performance. That show is going to be great."
Encore Books & Records: Cymande, June 26
Encore Books & Records has anchored NDG’s stretch of Sherbrooke for over two decades, its turquoise façade giving way to floor-to-ceiling shelves packed with used books, vinyl, and art prints. The shop hosts tiny desk concerts, jazz duos on Sunday afternoons, and a poetry project that keeps the memory of owner Sean Madden's late father alive. You’d better believe it’s got a good reputation.
Their employee Vanessa's pick for the festival is the free show by Cymande, the British funk and soul group playing the Scène TD on June 26 at 7 p.m. and the case for going is strong: Cymande formed in London in 1971, drawing on the Afro-Caribbean roots of their members, who came from Guyana, Jamaica, and Saint Vincent, to build a sound they called "nyah-rock," a blend of funk, soul, reggae, jazz, and African music that didn't fit neatly into any existing category. They made history in 1973 as the first British band to headline the Apollo Theater, then broke up a year later when the British music industry largely ignored them.
Their rehabilitation came through hip-hop, where Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash, De La Soul, and eventually the Fugees all reached into the Cymande catalogue. A full reunion followed in 2012, and their most recent album, Renascence, released in January 2025, was praised for returning to the warmth and precision of their original 1970s sound. Their SXSW appearance in 2022 signalled the scale of the rediscovery. This is a free show, which means no excuse.
"It’s jazz, it’s funk, it’s inclusive… and I always wanted to see them live," Vanessa says.
Death of Vinyl: Angine de Poitrine, June 27
Flipping through crates at Death of Vinyl makes time feel negotiable. Open since 2007 in Little Italy, the shop stocks everything from rare jazz cuts to obscure Italo-disco, local punk to 12-inch dance classics, and operates on a philosophy of no gatekeeping and no snobbery. The staff know their stuff and aren't shy about it.
Their employee Nick's pick is Angine de Poitrine, the masked microtonal math-rock duo from Saguenay playing the TD Stage on June 27 at 9:30 p.m.:
“I'll likely be attending the (free) Angine de Poitrine show for the sole reason of it being probably one of the biggest events they're going to be holding at that festival in recent years. I just want to be a part of that."
This ain’t hyperbole. Khn and Klek de Poitrine, who have performed together since they were thirteen and built their elaborate polka-dot alter egos as a one-off joke in 2019, have spent the last year and change becoming one of the most talked-about bands on the planet. A KEXP session filmed at Transmusicales in Rennes last December went viral in February and now sits at over fifteen million views. Their second album, Vol. II, dropped in April to serious critical attention, with Dave Grohl calling them "completely bonkers" and the New York Times praising their command of rhythm, repetition, and noise.
The fact that this show is free, at the Place des Festivals, makes it the kind of event people will be talking about having been at.
Cheap Thrills: The Alchemist (DJ Set), June 30
Cheap Thrills has occupied the second floor of a lone 19th-century greystone on Metcalfe Street since 1984, surviving the boutique hotels and office towers that swallowed everything around it. Gary Worsley started there as an employee and bought the shop in 2019, keeping the same follow-the-customer approach that's kept it relevant across five decades of shifting formats. The jazz section here’s as strong as the metal.
His pick is The Alchemist, the Beverly Hills-born producer and DJ playing Club Soda on June 30 at 9:00 pm alongside YAMA//SATO. Born Alan Maman, The Alchemist came up producing for Mobb Deep in the late 1990s and has spent the decades since building one of the most respected catalogues in underground hip-hop, working with Nas, Freddie Gibbs, Earl Sweatshirt, Kendrick Lamar, and Armand Hammer, among many others. His sample-heavy, atmospherically dense production style draws heavily on jazz and soul, which makes a Jazz Fest appearance feel less like a programming curveball than it might first seem.
"The Alchemist has also had a pretty amazing couple of years with his work with Freddie Gibbs, with Arm & Hammer," says Gary Worsley. "I think that would be a very good show."
Tickets required.
Le Vacarme: Tortoise, July 2
Le Vacarme arrived on Plaza St-Hubert in 2017 to offer up a vinyl shop built by someone with deep roots in the Montreal music scene. Jeff Rioux, who came up through the Emoragei fanzine, the label Where Are My Records, and years hosting Les Criquets Crinqués on CISM, opened the shop to spotlight modern rock, deep cuts, and curated classics without dusty gatekeeping.
Jeff Rioux's pick is Tortoise, the Chicago post-rock institution playing Théâtre Maisonneuve on July 2 at 9:00 pm:
“That's going to be a crazy show because their new album is awesome."
He’s talking about their 2025 album Touch, their first record in nine years. After Tortoise formed in 1990 and spent the following decade building a body of work, including Millions Now Living Will Never Die (1996) and TNT (1998), they essentially invented a template for genre-defiant instrumental music, weaving together krautrock, dub, minimalism, electronica, and jazz into something that resisted easy categorization and influenced nearly everything that followed.
Their latest, Touch, has been four years in the making, recorded across three cities after the band's members dispersed from Chicago, and has resulted in something described by guitarist Jeff Parker as the most cohesive record they've made. Rolling Stone has called Tortoise "a live marvel," and the Théâtre Maisonneuve, one of Place des Arts' finer rooms, is the right setting to find out why. Tickets required.
Phonopolis: Billy Bragg, July 4
Phonopolis has held its ground since 2010, when Nathan Gage moved his scrappy Parc Avenue record shop to a proper storefront that then-neighboured Drawn & Quarterly. Jordan Robson-Cramer, who joined early and took over ownership in 2015, has kept the shop's original instincts intact with opinionated curation across experimental, local, jazz, soul, hip-hop, folk, and electronic, with a strong 12-inch section and staff who are often (if not always) working musicians first.
Robson-Cramer's going to see Billy Bragg, who closes out the festival at Club Soda on July 4 at 9:00 pm.
Bragg’s been at it since 1983, when he released Life's a Riot with Spy vs Spy and started building a reputation as a solo electric guitarist whose lyrics spoke in his own accent about unions and class and love and the world as he found it. The comparison that followed him through the early years, a ‘one-man Clash,’ has long since given way to something more durably his own: a four-decade body of work that has remained politically engaged without becoming preachy, and emotionally honest without being sentimental.
His most recent release, "City of Heroes," came out in January 2026, a protest song written in response to ICE shootings in Minneapolis, recorded and released within hours of the event.
“I would be really excited to see Billy Bragg… His messages are always on point and I think in today's world, more than ever, he's speaking to the people in ways they can relate... He's been a solid punk folk hero for decades,” says Jordan Robson-Cramer.
Ending the festival on that note feels about right. Tickets required.
Check out the full Festival International de Jazz de Montréal lineup, June 25 to July 4, to see all of the performances taking place.
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