Drawnote of Sylvie Courvoisier Trio by Henning Bolte



Wednesday

Next day it appeared the world had changed profoundly through the results of the US presidential elections. It obviously had affected the US musicians at the festival quite heavily. That “day after”it had a clearly noticeable effect on the concert of the trio of Sylvie Courvoisier, Drew Gress and Kenny Wollesen the same evening. They played their out loud and furiously their displeasure and discomfort in a powerful fulminant performance.

The concert started furiously, kept its extraordinary initial sharpness and left its deep scratches and etchings in the spout of the music. From that fierce onset Courvoisier, Gress and Wollesen built bold tonal configurations collaged in a strong dramaturgy and highly dynamic flow, thereby sculpturing richly contoured shapes. Multiple strands with contrasting moods run through one another. Rhythmically driving and elegiac motifs were folded into each other or alternated by way of jump cuts. It was still more urged on by some Beethovenian pogo. Neatly ‘triorized’ as one unified body of sound Courvoisier, Gress and Wollesen left a strong mark with Wollesen’s Blue Boys (his Japanese brushes) as a swishing eye-/ear catcher.

Slightly different affairs were the two concerts that sandwiched the exemption of Courvoisier, Gress and Wollesen. Prior to it the duo of Turkish-French cellist Anil Eraslan and German pianist Julia Kadel performed at CEAAC in Strasbourg. Julia Kadel (b.1986) is the second German female pianist on Blue Note. Until now, she has released two albums on the label with her trio: Im Vertrauen (2014) and Über und Unter (2016). Anil Eraslan (b. 1981) is a Turkish-French cellist and a regular at Jazzdor. It was a kind of de-jazzed and improvisation-enriched kind of music – clear and playful, delicate and sophisticated, also a bit dry at times. There was a resemblance with contemporary composed music but the music clearly had been constructed and developed jointly by and in their interplay. It was an interesting approach, and one could argue they could have exploited the already existent humorous moments a bit more.

The trio of pianist Marc Perrenoud from Geneva went the strongly propulsive, bouncing, rhythmically centred way of the piano trio. Its approach sometimes reminds of the approach of Ramsey Lewis. The Geneva trio with Marco Müller and Cyril Regamey however operates on the basis of today’s rhythm patterns and groove directions without ending up in those diluted and pruned variations of minimal music of a couple of trendy bands. It proved that Perrenoud has a special talent to strip down old pieces to the essential and slowly let them arise and extend from that core. The trio could make (old) songs swell up slowly and let them ebb away in a great way. It created a new compactness and urgency of those pieces. That also went up for slow, ballad like pieces. The trio is strong in dealing with dynamics and space as a basis for their redesign of ‘old’ material from the jazz tradition with refreshing compactness and propulsive tension.

Julien Desprez

Thursday

On Thursday, the festival took us to another city in Alsace, Mulhouse. Situated south of Strasbourg, near the German and the Swiss border, La Filature – national scene of Mulhouse – had programmed a special night of “sonic exploration”. The city also has its own renowned annual METEO festival for improvised and experimental music, which takes place in August.

The opening act was an extended version of the Acapulco, a solo project by French electric guitarist Julien Desprez, who is now taking it on the road with new dimensions. He has, ironically, called this version “Redux”. Desprez has a strong active role in the French Coax collective and is involved in quite a lot of smaller French groups, in Eve Risser’s extraordinary White Desert Orchestra as well as in international groups as Fire! Orchestra and the new installed Nu Ensemble of Mats Gustafsson. He’s been playing along with Rob Mazurek, Mwata Bowden and Matt Lux in the last “Bridge” tour in France and in The US. Acapulco Redux was recently brought to Rio de Janeiro. Desprez can – no doubt – be considered an outstanding voice of the new French generation.

In his redux show Desprez ‘interferes’ and interacts musically with light, space and sound. He takes the solo concert to a new synesthetic dimension. It would lead into a truly electrifying experience, wouldn’t it? Although I answered in the beginning with a safe and sound “No, don’t worry” when my neighbour asked me with a skeptic look if she would need the earplugs we were given, it turned out to be just that!




When the audience entered the high ceiling big theatre, they recognized a playground composed of rows of looping pedals, multiple jacks cables, electric devices and a set of fluorescent white LED-lights, on the floor. Desprez started and took control over all of these. They allow him to appear/disappear, make him walk around, stop, burst, push his nervous twitch-play to a new frontier and start again, in another location in the room, finishing the set in the audience! It was a stroboscopic experience directed by Gregory Edelein, the scenographer, who joined Desprez on the stage to greet. The audience was taken aback by this radical experience, but after all, and more significantly, stimulated, and charged!

The second act of the evening invited the audience to be immersed in “Um”, a contemporary meditative piece by Lebanese composer Zad Moultaka, directed by Philippe Nahon. This piece, a creation performed by 10 musicians and six vocalists, was so relaxing and profound that one could do nothing but acknowledge the pros and not the cons of golden musical contrasts. This is what we expect from a major festival such as Jazzdor.

Conclusion

Even a short visit this year gave strong indications that Jazzdor remains on the right track. Artistic standards are high. The matching of French with European and North American musicians is consistent, successful and forms a solid element. Another strong feature is the fair representation of the older generation, the middle generation and the young(est) generation of musicians. In comparison with other festivals it is not only well proportioned representation. It is especially recognizable that it is the result of a systematic approach with a clear vision. Samuel Blaser, Desprez, Eraslan/Kadel, Jalal, Poco Loco, QÖÖLP, Perrenoud Trio, Sartorius. The series of names from the younger generation speaks for itself. The inclusion of groups/bands, that can function as bridges to other genres and scenes like the Electro-scene is also noteworthy. The Actions Péripheriques are still impressively extended and are anything but a superfluous luxury, on the contrary. All these elements are key tasks of festivals subsidized by public money. The festival programming is clearly not following the receiving-house model. It is recognizably the result of a culturally reflected artistic view and related decision-making, from which all parties involved can reap the benefits.