Live concert photography of International Festival de Jazz de Montréal's NYC Winter Jazzfest showcase at Baby's All Right.

Live Concert Photography: NYC Winter Jazzfest 2025: Festival International de Jazz de Montréal Presents: Salin with Dominique Fils-Aimé at Baby’s All Right 1/11/25

Since its founding back in 2005, NYC Winter Jazzfest has cemented a reputation as a hotbed of cultural discovery while presenting new and exciting sounds and scenes throughout New York. The festival has grown quite rapidly from its original, one-day single-location program to a 2020 lineup that spanned 21 stages over 11 nights across Downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn, featuring over 700 artists and more than 170 groups. And if you’re a jazz head, NYC Winter Jazzfest is a pivotal destination for arts leaders, cultural cognoscenti and journalists.

The festival celebrates — and presents — jazz as a living entity, in which history constantly collides with the future. And as a result, the festival and its artists have constantly and consistently pushed the boundaries of what jazz is supposed to be and sound like.

The musical marathon portion of the festival takes place during the Friday and Saturday night of its run has become recognized as a crucial and unique New York nightlife offering during what’s typically a bit of a slow period of the year. The festival’s audiences are given access to all participating venues from early evening, deep into the wee hours, offering an unparalleled experience for jazz heads, featuring experiential sound and global creative impulses.

Earlier this month, I was at Baby’s All Right to catch what may arguably be one of the most eclectic NYC Winter Jazzfest showcases I’ve seen in some time. International Festival de Jazz de Montréal presented two artists: Salin, a Thai-born, Montréal-based, Juno nominated drummer, producer and composer whose forthcoming album effortlessly elements of the sounds of Northeast Thailand and 70s West African psychedelia, through the lens of modern soulful production. The result is a trippy, mind-bending yet dance floor friendly grooves that bring Fela Kuti to mind.

Juno Award-winning and Polaris Music Prize shortlisted, Montréal-based singer/songwriter Dominique Fils-Aimé opened. Her set featured material from her last album, 2023’s Our Roots Run Deep. The album sees Aimé turning inwards, reflecting on her own emotional and spiritual landscape while sonically continuing to mesh jazz, R&B and soul into something distinctly her own — and entirely contemporary. As she says it stems from “a desire to shed light on our intergenerational treasures rather than intergenerational trauma, using these treasures to address and heal trauma.”

Her set continued her reputation for presenting mesmerizing, introspective, genre-defying material anchored around her gorgeous, expressive vocal.

Photos are below, as always.