Back at it - Jazz in Paris for the Holiday Season

So, there's soooooo much going on in the Paris Jazz Clubs and Cafes and with Live Jazz in Paris over the next month and half. Visitors roll into the city in spite of the rain and drizzle, and what could be more romantic than a walk across the Seine on the Pont Neuf from the left bank to see a fine jazz band playing in the Marais in the cellar of some 500 year old building. And, by the way, its great to back updating this after a couple of months away - life called me away from the web while I toured and did the final mix on my new album (more on that in later posts...)



So, lets start with next weekend......

First, I'll just drop in my link to the listings of Django-style Jazz Manouche. Here's an extensive listing on the pages of Marc Masselin, he hasn't updated these for a while, so always give a call to confirm beforehand!


Then lets try and find something 'out-there', and something a little more trad.


So, coming up on the 21st of November there's a group that wire calls "disciplined, focused music, the sound of people really thinking and playing, and close attention is consistently rewarded." - Clive Bell, The Wire.





Trio Sowari
Phil Durrant software sampler/treatments
Bertrand Denzler tenor saxophone
Burkhard Beins percussion & objects

And they're playing at Souffle continu - 20/22 rue gerbier - 75011 paris - 01 40 24 17 21.

I don't know the group but the label does some really fine work and they've been touring continuously now for the last while with this work. I'm always curious to see how a group integrates the samplers into live work. Here's a review from London

"Trio Sowari is one of European EAI's most consistently impressive working units, and their set didn't disappoint. Percussionist Beins and laptopper Durrant are old hands at lowercase - the former a stalwart of the Berlin scene (Phosphor, Perlonex..), the latter one of the pioneers of so-called reductionism (he helped coin the much-maligned term in the first place) in the groundbreaking trio with Radu Malfatti and Thomas Lehn documented on 1997's Beinhaltung (Fringes) and 1999's dach (Erstwhile). Trio Sowari takes its name from Durrant's 1997 album of the same name, but the violin has been consigned to its case in recent years, and it's on laptop that he joins forces with Beins and tenor saxophonist Denzler, who's mastered a whole repertoire of so-called extended techniques. You'd never guess he started out playing thorny free jazz. That said, Trio Sowari's set at the Instants was quite sprightly, Beins and Denzler's scrapes and hisses coinciding with almost uncanny telepathy to counterpoint Durrant's meticulously deployed fizzles and pops. "Too perfect", grumbled a local noisenik at the bar afterwards. Well, I've heard that said about Evan Parker, too. Maybe it simply means that this kind of music has matured sufficiently to define its own aesthetic rules and regulations. Then again, one person's maturity is another's stagnation. Let's see what the second decade brings. Here's to the next ten years, Jacko."
- Dan Warburton on Potlatch's 10th Anniversary at Les Instants Chavirés, Montreuil (Paris), May 29th-30th, 2008 -


And on a more traditional, accessible level Elizabeth Kontomanou will be at Sunset Sunside with an album release party that's coming out on Nocturne.





She'll be there on the 21st as well and tickets are a reasonable 22 Euros. She has a really fine voice and a nice quartet behind here with some blues and billie holiday stylings going on. You can check out her voice on her Myspace page


And finally, my recommendation for all of the holiday season will continue to be the fantabulous new incarnation of Duc des Lombards - the venerable institution on the street of the same name. When I saw they were 'renovating' it last year I fully expected it to reopen as an Irish Pub, or some other theme bar - but no, they've brought it back in much more splendour than before, with better sightlines and whole new look. So check out any of the programming this season. I'll be pulling some highlights, but its a pretty safe bet any night of the week right now.


and I stumbled on the first image for this posting on the web - its a great mashup of images for Paris and is available here Paris Jazz Poster