Blue Indigo - Jazz in Paris at the Quai Branly Museum

Jazz in Paris from around the world

Le Quai Branly is a wonderful new museum on the left bank.  One more example of new  cutting edge architecture for the city.  They specialize in exhibiting world cultures and the interior is a treat to wander through - it's a maze of rooms and alleys and interiors that make you feel like you are discovering the different worlds.  And, in Spring the little park in front is a welcome retreat from the bustle of the city.  This season they are presenting a jazz series that is a welcome change from the regular jazz venues and jazz cafes around town.

Over the course of the 2010-2011 season they are presenting a series they call Blue Indigo, a season of concerts that symbolically retraces the original roads through the Deep South (with John Hebert’s Byzantine Monkey, Matana Roberts’ Coin Coin) to the East Coast (Tyshawn Sorey Quartet, Steve Lehman Octet, Craig Taborn, William Parker & Gerald Cleaver Trio), and the Midwest (Mike Reed’s People, Places & Things, Chicago Underground Duo).

Bleu Indigo also reaches out to the black Atlantic archipelago, either towards South America (Sao Paulo Underground), Africa or Europe (Steve Lehman Octet, Matana Roberts’ Coin Coin).

The museum says, "This is the first season of a series of concerts dedicated to a hybrid musical genre born at the beginning of last century and venturing into it. This original and innovative program features young talents from across the Atlantic. Most of them have projects that have never been heard in France but all beat new paths for today’s creative music. This musical art, now part of our musical heritage, remains legendary and even visionary."

SATURDAY 11TH DECEMBER 2010 6 P.M.

People, Places & Things : people, places and things. With his quartet, drummer Mike Reed strives to decode the energizing messages of his native Chicago in the last fifty years and to find in it invitations to today’s most fabulous voyages.

Steve Lehman Octet

Steve Lehman © Scott Friedlander

SATURDAY 22ND JANUARY 2011 6 P.M.

co production with the Sons d’Hiver festival

Saxophonist Steve Lehman’s octet. He is a master in the art of sound chiaroscuro developed by French composer Tristan Murail with his spectral music. For Lehman, his music is exclusively seeking, typically New York and contemporary in its way of being both coherent and bold.

Website of the festival Sons d'Hiver (new window)

Matana Robert's Coin Coin

Matana Robert © DR

SATURDAY 26TH FEBRUARY 2011 6 P.M.

For several years, saxophonist and clarinettist Matana Roberts searched for her American, African and European musical ancestors between Louisiana, Togo and Scotland. But her decidedly lyrical art is less evocative than a story blurred by such tragedy, than evocatory of the stories endlessly told to reinvent a future life.

Chicago Underground and Sao Paulo Underground

Sao Paulo Underground © DR

SATURDAY 9TH APRIL 2011 6 P.M.

The Chicago Underground and the Sao Paulo Underground are twin ensembles created by cornettist Rob Mazurek, who lives between both cities and always favours dialogue between preferably turbulent drummers and percussionists, and all noises, effects and treatment that electronic machinations now offer.

Craig Taborn, William Parker and Gerald Cleaver Trio

 

SATURDAY 25TH JUNE 2011 6 P.M.

The piano, bass and drum trio is just as much a canonical jazz form with harmonious sequences of actions, as a mirror to go through. These three improvisation masters linked to most projects who have disrupted this art form in the last 20 years, know the paths to musical wonderlands.

for more information got to Quai Branly Jazz Indigo 

Musée du Quai Branly

37, quai Branly

75007 - Paris

Tel: 01 56 61 70 00

Tuesday, Wednesday and Sunday from 11am to 19h

Thursday, Friday and Saturday: 11am to 21pm