Paris Jazz celebrates the late lamented Albert Ayler - Dec 2nd

If you want to step out of the regular Paris jazz clubs and jazz bars and see some live jazz in Paris in a wonderful space then check out this event at the contemporary art museum 'Le Fondation Cartier'

Albert Ayler (July 13, 1936 – November 25, 1970) was an American avant-garde jazz saxophonist, singer and composer.

Ayler was among the most primal of the free jazz musicians of the 1960s; critic John Litweiler wrote that "never before or since has there been such naked aggression in jazz" He possessed a deep blistering tone—achieved by using the stiff plastic Fibrecane no. 4 reeds on his tenor saxophone—and used a broad, pathos-filled vibrato.  On Dec 2nd, at 8pm (for the cost of only 7.50 euros) the Fondation Cartier in Paris will be holding an 'hommage' to the memory and music of Albert Ayler.

His trio and quartet records of 1964, like Spiritual Unity and The Hilversum Session, show him advancing the improvisational notions of John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman into abstract realms where timbre, not harmony and melody, is the music's backbone. His ecstatic music of 1965 and 1966, like "Spirits Rejoice" and "Truth Is Marching In" has been compared by critics to the sound of a brass band, and involved simple, march-like themes which alternated with wild group improvisations and were regarded as retrieving jazz's pre-Louis Armstrong.  He was found dead in New York's East River in 1970.


The Fondation Cartier in Paris  (a wonderful modern building just to the south of the city centre) holds a regular

series of performance events they call soirees 'Nomadic'.  it's hosted by Joelle Leandre, a bassist who specializes in continuing the free jazz tradition of Albert Ayler.  


Here's a youtube link of Albert Ayler playing with his quartet at the historic and sad occasion of the funeral of John Coltrane





And here is Joelle Leandre at with her 'stone quartet'

information and reservations every day except Monday - from 12 to 8pm

33 - (0)142185672