It took me eight years to make it inside a performance at the PEI Jazz and Blues Festival. The delay was a combination of some misplaced misgivings about what “jazz and blues” music entails and a pigheaded determination not to support a festival that had put its sponsor’s inflatable beer cans in the middle of a city street. All it took, in the end, was a multi-year soft-sell campaign by members of the Williams-Nicholson-Sorenson musical dynasty.

In the end, I’m sad I didn’t get over my misgivings many, many years ago, as the Gypsophilia-Alain Caron double bill that Oliver and I enjoyed last night at Murphy’s Community Centre was a tour de force and if it’s typical of what I’ve spent 7 years missing, then it’s a grievous loss. Here’s a taste of what we saw and heard.