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Photo taken at 2015 GMF Tuscany International Workshop and Jazz Festival Photo Credit: Antonio Porcar Cano. All Rights Reserved |
The Global Music Foundation Tuscany International Workshop and Jazz Festival 2015 took place from August 4th to 11th. Photos by Antonio Porcar. Words by Sebastian Scotney
Let the pictures tell the story. Award-winning jazz photographer Antonio Porcar Cano has portrayed the atmosphere of this year’s Global Music Foundation course in the stunning medieval Tuscan hill-town Certaldo Alto. The first picture above captures stellar musicians in an informal context: René Marie, Bruce Barth, Masa Yamaguchi and Stephen Keogh were playing for the people in the streets. Music ceases to be a product guarded and kept remote by barriers. The whole idea is that it – and also the musicians who make it – are up close, interacting, right there.
The remaining pictures try tell the story of a typical day on a GMF course from the morning to way past midnight.(*) Porcar has caught the day, and shown how the faculty of musicians and the students have seized it.
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Photo taken at 2015 GMF Tuscany International Workshop and Jazz Festival Photo Credit: Antonio Porcar Cano. All Rights Reserved |
The day starts at GMF courses with either Tai Chi or, in this case, with a rhythm class. It is fascinating to watch the whole group first being settled, experiencing the silence, and then “experiecing the pulse in the body” as the rhythms are sent on their way around the room. The methods are delierately holistic, about increasing consciousness (rather than self-consciousness or anxiety or tension), and on removing what gets in the way of creativity. If it sounds a bit new-age, it is very effective, and the evidence is clearly there that the students who attend love it: at any time, some 70% of the participants in a GMF course are repeat bookings.
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Photo taken at 2015 GMF Tuscany International Workshop and Jazz Festival Photo Credit: Antonio Porcar Cano. All Rights Reserved |
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Photo taken at 2015 GMF Tuscany International Workshop and Jazz Festival Photo Credit: Antonio Porcar Cano. All Rights Reserved |
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Photo taken at 2015 GMF Tuscany International Workshop and Jazz Festival Photo Credit: Antonio Porcar Cano. All Rights Reserved |
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Photo taken at 2015 GMF Tuscany International Workshop and Jazz Festival Photo Credit: Antonio Porcar Cano. All Rights Reserved |
Guillermo again, this time with the singing class. Al fresco. If the 36 degree heat counts as al fresco….
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Photo taken at 2015 GMF Tuscany International Workshop and Jazz Festival Photo Credit: Antonio Porcar Cano. All Rights Reserved |
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Photo taken at 2015 GMF Tuscany International Workshop and Jazz Festival Antonio Porcar Cano. All Rights Reserved |
Listening. Perhaps that is the most important skill to learn. It’s not all about playing…
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Photo taken at 2015 GMF Tuscany International Workshop and Jazz Festival Photo Credit: Antonio Porcar Cano. All Rights Reserved |
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Photo taken at 2015 GMF Tuscany International Workshop and Jazz Festival Photo Credit: Antonio Porcar Cano. All Rights Reserved |
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Photo taken at 2015 GMF Tuscany International Workshop and Jazz Festival Photo Credit: Antonio Porcar Cano. All Rights Reserved |
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Photo taken at 2015 GMF Tuscany International Workshop and Jazz Festival Photo Credit: Antonio Porcar Cano. All Rights Reserved |
The action goes on way into the night. Antonio Porcar catches so many kinds of light in his pictures. This is the late night jam. On trumpet is up-and-coming trumpeter, Dutchman Daniel Claasen.
(*) The pictures were taken on different days
Antonio Porcar Cano’s portrait of Benny Golson at the July 2013 Peñíscola Festival was winner of 2014 Photo of the Year Award at the 2014 JJA Awards in New York. There is due to be a London exhibition of his work in November.
LINKS: Review of Scott Hamilton in Certaldo
Review of René Marie in Certaldo
Categories: miscellaneous
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