63RD JAZZ À JUAN
Juan-les-Pins 8th -18th July 2024

PROLOGUE

The 63rd edition of Europe’s longest running jazz festival followed its established pattern of being a jazz plus other genres event. The main festival has a single stage in a spectacular 2800 seated arena overlooking the Mediterranean where’s there one concert a night usually split between two groups.

While there was always jazz on the adjacent free stage before the main concert, much of it high quality from up-and-coming bands many of which had impressed at the Jammin’ Juan jazz market place the previous November, for the jazz fan it was a case of pick your nights for going to the main festival.

There’s always leading American jazz artists who are on tour in Europe at Jazz à Juan, and this year I was looking forward to hearing world renowned saxophonists Chris Potter and Joshua Redman, and some high-profile jazz names from the French jazz scene.

The line up also included Marcus Miller and leading double bassist Avashi Cohen’s project with Cuban musicians, Avashi Cohen Banda Iroko, and among the other genres Senegal’s world superstar Youssou N’Dour.

BELMONDO DEAD JAZZ

Lionel and Stéphane Belmondo are leading figures on the French jazz scene, and BELMONDO DEAD JAZZ is the realisation of saxophonist Lionel Belmondo’s re-imagining of carefully selected songs of the Grateful Dead, the Californian rock band who fused elements of a number of styles and were known for lengthy jamming.

It was an instrumental re-imaging with no vocals and no guitars. Instead there was a duo of keyboard players, the excellent Eric Legnini playing fender Rhodes and Laurent Finkelson on Fender Rhodes and Farfisa organ and piano.

The keyboards did predominate, playing in harmony, doing call and response, layering different melodic ideas on top of one another and soloing. They were supported by the solid rhythm section of Thomas Bramerie, double bass, and Dré Pallemaerts drums, with Stéphane Belmondo on trumpet and flugel horn and Lionel Belmondo on saxophone and flute coming in and out of the music.

The band played only four or five numbers in their allotted hour fusing styles as I understand the Grateful Dead did. The group opened with an anthemic trumpet blast over funky keyboards, the first of a number of fierce short sharp trumpet contributions from Lionel Belmondo.

During the set there was spacey psychedelia, African rhythms, a waltz, blues, a ballad and even Rachmaninov style bells from the organ.

The last number was a splendid force field of cacophonous quasi free jazz with a surprise appearance by Brad Mehldau ahead of him playing alongside Chris Potter. The group made space for two very edgy piano contributions from him before the number ended surprisingly gently.

It wasn’t necessary to know the Grateful Dead’s music, which I don’t, to enjoy Belmondo Dead Jazz’s varied styles and the consistently good playing of keyboardists Legnini and Finkelson, and of course, Brad Mehldau’s appearance was a bonus.

CHRIS POTTER, BRAD MEHLDAU, JOHN PATITUCCI AND JOHNATHAN BLAKE

February 2024 saw the release ‘Eagle’s Point’, leading saxophonist and composer Chris Potter’s third studio album since his move to Edition Records.

Unlike his previous two studio albums for Edition that had electronics in the mix, see https://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/chris-potter-circuits
for a review of ‘Circuits’, Eagle’s Point’ is an entirely acoustic collection of eight Potter originals.

To document them Potter managed to get an all-star line-up of some of the busiest and most successful jazz players around: Brad Mehldau piano, John Patitucci double bass, and Brian Blade, drums, into the studio to record the album with him.

The set at Juan consisted of tunes from the album played by the same superstar line -up with the exception that Johnathan Blake was behind the drum kit. While Potter and Mehldau predominated, Patitucci and Blake made vital contributions both as soloists and to the collective sound. Seemingly this was why the group was in the name of them all rather than being called the Chris Potter Group.

The musicianship from all four was outstanding, and it was clear they were enjoying playing Potter’s attractive melodies together. Potter played tenor sax the whole set including for the joyful ‘Indigo llidikó’, contrary to the recording where he played bass clarinet, and for the ballad ‘Aria for Anna’ where on the album he played soprano sax.

Throughout Potter displayed great dexterity and phrasing playing very cleanly when soloing, often seamlessly integrating abstract passages and the melody. Mehldau took the tunes for a walk, and arguably sounded even better than he did last year at Jazz à Juan with his own trio. Patitucci was precision and energy personified, and Blake breathed new life into the drum solo combining speed, power and contrast with a quality which I can only describe as grace. Even Mehldau sitting listening half turned towards Blake seemed in awe.

Blake and Patitucci took the lead at both the beginning and end of ‘Cloud Message’ bookending a bright solo from Potter, and Patitucci’s earthy double bass solo led off ‘Eagle’s Point’ which developed into a pleasing blend of edginess and melody.

My only slight caveat was there was just one instance of an interchange between Potter and Mehldau in comparison to Mehldau accompanying Potter. This was in the ballad Potter wrote for his daughter ’Aria for Anna’, and I would have liked more.

But this is a miniscule quibble set against what was an outstanding set of contemporary mainstream jazz played by an ensemble who were all at the very top of their game.

There was a lot of joy in the music and the foursome finished in joyous style with Potter’s calypso like tune ‘Horizon Dance’. At the end the whole audience seemed to be on their feet applauding.

The four colleagues came back for an encore, Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields ‘Pick Yourself Up’ from Showtime (1936). But this star-studded quartet had no need to pick themselves up as they had stood tall from the very first to the very last note.

JOSHUA REDMAN GROUP FEATURING GABRIELLE CAVASSA

This was Redman’s eighth visit to Juan but his first since 2010 and he received a warm welcome. Almost everything he played was from his current album ‘Where We Are’, his first for Blue Note and his first with a vocalist. All the tracks on the album, several of which are a mix of two songs, are about places in America.

Redman received strong support from his instrumental colleagues, Paul Cornish piano, whose impressive soloing seemed to bring together classical and jazz, Debussy and Monk, Phillip Norris double bass and Nazir Ibo drums.

Gabrielle Cavassa had an attractive voice but I had doubts at times about her delivery. All the vocals were slow to medium paced. This worked quite well with some songs for example in the opener ’Chicago Blues’, a mash up of ‘Going to Chicago’ and ‘Chicago’ by Sufjan Stevens and in the closing number, included as a kind of homage to Juan-les-Pins, Blossom Dearie’s frothy ’The
Rivera’.

But at times Cavassa’s vocal took the air out of a number by lacking in intensity, a problem which might have stemmed from the arrangements as much as from Gabrielle Cavassa.

This was very noticeable in the version of The Eagles’ ‘Hotel California’ when after a powerful solo from double bassist Philip Norris, the intensity dropped markedly when Cavassa re-entered with the vocal, but picked up when the group took over the reins again.

Redman himself was in fine form. He was in languid blues mode with ‘Chicago Blues’, more edgy on Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Streets of Philadelphia’, and swung his way effortlessly through ‘New England’.

The peak of his and his group’s performance was John Coltrane’s ‘Alabama’ which it is widely believed Coltrane composed in response to the firebombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama that killed four African-American girls.

It was preceded by Cavassa singing the light hearted ‘Stars Fell on Alabama’, after which she left the stage to the instrumentalists. The contrast made Redman’s version of Coltrane’s cry for social justice even more affecting. Redman built from a slow deliberate start to a howl of pain and anger at the climax. It felt he poured all his considerable talent and passion into what was a musical and emotional tour de force that he got across to the audience and that towered over everything else played in the set. It was a performance that will live long in my memory.

ERIK TRUFFAZ

The music that French-Swiss trumpeter and composer Erik Truffaz and his group brought to Jazz à Juan was reinterpretations of the theme music of films

An invitation to compose the music for a documentary and then to play a concert at the close of a film festival led Truffaz to produce two albums ‘Rollin’ and ‘Clap’, his 21st and 22nd that both consist of versions of film theme music.

The theme music he selected is largely from movies not much known outside France, so no reinterpretation of Hollywood blockbusters such as the theme from ‘Star Wars’.

Truffaz was inspired to take up the trumpet after hearing Miles Davis’s ‘Kind of Blue’, and when using a mute, he did sound very Miles like. He’s known for incorporating rock, hip hop and dance music into his jazz, and his band for this concert seemed to reflect this: on bass guitar his long-time collaborator Marcello Giuliani, on lead guitar Matthis Pascaud, on keyboards Alexis Anérille and on drums Raphaël Chassin.

He and his group started with Nina Rota’s theme for Fellini’s ‘La Strada’, Truffaz alternated long notes and fluttering embellishments over his group playing a funky dance rhythm.

The second number I think was named as ‘Cycle by Cycle’ though there’s no track called that on either ‘Rollin’ or ‘Clap’. It started pleasantly with Truffaz again playing long arching notes this time over a steadily pedalling bass guitar rhythm. But it got more sinister and tense as it went on, climaxing in a wailing lead guitar solo with Truffaz’s trumpet joining in at the crescendo. It sounded that this was a film which didn’t have a happy ending.

One of the most enjoyable passages of the set was a tender duo between Truffaz and the keyboard of Alexis Anérille which probably was music from a love scene.

In contrast ‘Requiem pour un con’ featured pounding rock guitar combined with a keyboard blitz over which Truffaz trumpet played the requiem twice, first in semi celebratory style and then, using a mute, as a lament. For me this song was the highlight the hour long set. Similar to Dead Jazz you
didn’t need to know the original music to enjoy what was being played, and it went down well with the audience

FRENCH NATIONAL DAY 14TH JULY

On French National Day it is tradition that the town of Antibes, the administrative area of which extends to Juan-les-Pins, sponsors that night’s concert and all tickets are free.

For this year’s concert the Festival had lined up four acts that not only had I never seen but I’d never heard of, with each playing a 30-minute set.

SAKI OZAWA

Saki Ozawa is a young Japanese pianist-composer based in the Tokyo area. Her debut album released in 2023 is called ‘Cheers’. Her first number reflected the album’s upbeat title being a breezy melodic ‘number which she played bouncing up and down on the piano. She was accompanied by French musicians Thomas Bramerie, double bass who’d previously appeared with Belmondo Dead Jazz, and Franck Agulhon on drums.

Her second number began more reflectively, became more flowing and then more intense showcasing her impressive technique which again was on show in her fourth and final number. In between came a tune which started slowly and abstractly and it was only when the melody began to emerge that I recognised it as ‘Danny Boy’. It was fun to hear a young Japanese pianist create what became a joyous piano romp from a hoary old Irish tune.

LI XIAOCHUAN

Born into a musical family and a graduate of Shanghai Conservatory, trumpeter Li Xiaochuan has a Masters in Jazz Studies from the University of North Texas and his CV says he’s played with Pat Metheny.

He brought what amounted to a small jazz orchestra with him that had a chorus of three other trumpets and a talented young woman vibraphone player.

She stole the show while sharing front line duties with Li’s trumpet and the group’s saxophonist. The saxophonist started nervously on piccolo sax but became much more confident on switching to tenor sax to play jagged late Coltrane like bursts.

There were ten or eleven musicians on stage and the arrangements presumably by Li, made good use of the energy and the power a group of this size can bring to its music. Li himself soloed in a contemporary mainstream style combining lyricism and edginess, and also doubled up as the quasi
conductor of what was an enjoyable team performance.

POETIC WAYS

The French quintet Poetic Ways first came together as a one-off in November 2021 as part of a live radio concert to celebrate the bicentenary of the Marseilles Conservatoire where the group’s leader and saxophonist Raphaël Imbert teaches.

The group featured the presence and voice of French singer of Cameroonian origin Celia Kameni. She studied classical music and jazz at Lyon Conservatoire and has sung a wide range of material including ‘Voodoo Child’ by Jimi Hendrix, French chanson given a Cuban makeover with Bigre! big band, and songs associated with Ella Fitzgerald on an album by The Amazing Keystone Big Band‘ We Love Ella’.

Both she and Raphaël Imbert share an interest in spiritual music and Poetic Ways’ opening number was a slow-paced version of ‘He’s got the whole world in his hands’. Kameni sang this with a contained intensity which was compelling.

The combination of her beautiful voice and this quality of contained intensity and emotion which she sustained throughout the short set was both impressive and absorbing. In the second number she added a faux stereo effect by singing into two mics at once alongside Imbert’s fluttering stuttering
soprano with an excellent piano contribution from Pierre-Francois Bernard.

During the set drummer Anne Paceo and double bassist Pierre Fenical also had their moments in the spotlight.

Imbert switched to tenor sax part way through introducing a more earthy timbre into the quartet’s set. The quartet played a jazzy slightly irreverent version of ‘La Marseillaise’, and a Jacques Brel song for which Kameni’s vocal and Imbert’s tenor sax intertwined beautifully and left the song’s tension deliciously unresolved.

Nina Simone is one of Kameni’s influences, and Poetic Ways’ version of the folk song ‘Black is the colour…’ which Simone performed regularly, switched from yearning chamber jazz to a more raucous semi free jazz style led by Imbert’s earthy tenor sax, and then back again.

The group’s finale was Nina Simone well known song ‘I Ain’t Got No / I Got Life’ for which Kameni used the full power of her voice and then finished the song with vocalese based on the singing of the indigenous Baka people of Cameroon.

Overall Poetic Ways’ re-interpretations were high quality with Imbert impressing both as a player and arranger and Kameni showing that potentially she could become a star, and they received a standing ovation.

As they left the stage the first fireworks light up the sky. The splendid pyrotechnics display was followed by the fourth act. Unfortunately, they were a damp squib both instrumentally and vocally.

OVERVIEW

The jazz at this year’s Festival provided two occasions I won’t easily forget, the wonderful set by Chris Potter and his A list colleagues, and Joshua Redman’s searing playing of Coltrane’s’ Alabama’.

I enjoyed too the jazz re-imaginings of non-jazz material by Belmondo Dead Jazz, by Erik Truffaz and by Poetic Ways. It was also fascinating also to hear young jazz musicians from the Far East.

I had hoped that well known French drummer Manu Katché who plays in many styles would play a jazz set. But instead he and his group played solid but not exceptional rock anchored in the 70’s and 80’s perhaps mindful of being followed by pop/rock band TOTO.

Manu Katché and TOTO in effect made the opening night of the festival a rock/pop night. There was also an African night featuring Tiken Jah Fakoly/Youssou N’Dour, a Cuban night with El Comité/Avashi Cohen Banda Iroko, and a funk cum disco night with Scary Pockets/Kool and the Gang.

I did enjoy the sound of Ivorian singer and songwriter Tiken Jah Fakoly accompanied by a band made up of mainly traditional acoustic west African instruments.

The festival was a success in terms of audience numbers The organisers have reported a ten percent increase and an average of 87 percent occupancy this year, and it seemed to me the jazz concerts were well attended. The biggest attendances though were for TOTO and Kool and the Gang who both sold out in advance, and for a concert by Pink Martini.

It is perhaps inevitable that with a 2800 seated arena to fill for 10 days, and prices starting at 40 euros there were as many if not more other genre acts as jazz acts, and that arguably all the jazz acts could be said to be from the ever- broader spectrum of mainstream contemporary jazz. But with its spectacular setting, and if it continues to provide special jazz moments like those provided by Chris Potter et al and by Joshua Redman, Jazz à Juan will continue to be at the very forefront of the European Jazz Festival scene.

COLIN MAY

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