Remi and the Jets

So I go for a first rehearsal with Remi, the pianist who'll be playing for me on the recording, and we go through the songs and then get to chatting about some songs he's working on. We head into his tiny studio and he fires up his computer to show me what he's working on right now. Now this is the bit where I feel like I'm someone who was expecting to take a drive in a comfortable but rather predictable Toyota, (I mean I've been around home studios before) however, when I climb into the Toyota I actually find that I'm sitting in the cockpit of an F1 fighter jet and we're doing loop the loops over the Grand Canyon. Remi has enough technology packed into this tiny little box that he could compete with Sony! So we spend an hour or so going through all the ways that one mic in his tiny (and I mean tiny) studio can be used to record some really beautiful music and then play with it after.

For the album I'm not that interested in capturing a 'live quartet' sound in the studio. I've always been in love with more produced sounds. One of my favourite pop albums of 2006 was Ry Cooder's Chavez Ravine: and I think every single instrument on there had been tweaked and produced. Since working with Brian Eno back in the 80's I've been an admirer of what a producer can do with a record. And frankly, I don't think a straight album is that marketable. Another singer, with another jazz quartet... my disc will languish in the 'slush pile' of Agents and Festival's around the world.....



So, the outcome of this technological revelation is that I wanted a producer for the disc and Remi has the goods and wants to do it, so he'll be on the editing, mixing, playing and tweaking side of things. However, because I head back to Canada in July and we need several weeks in the studio to make it work I'm going to have to move the recording up from the middle of June to the end of May!! Which leaves four weeks to work with the musicians and finish the arrangements.... Ayieee! May should be a fun month!

Julien Lallier Quartet at 7 Lezards Jazz Club in Paris

A cool Paris basement in the summer heat... Julien Lallier was at the 7 Lezards Jazz Bar in Paris on Monday night to play through the compositions on his latest album, "Tarifa", for an intimate, appreciative crowd. "Tarifa" was inspired by a trip to Spain (most of the pieces are names of Spanish towns, so you can retrace his route if you feel like a bit of geography). 


The album has a depth that's rare in a first album: Lallier's influences include Keith Jarret and Miles Davis and their sound can be heard lovingly echoed in the depths of Lallier's compositions. Working with a quartet of friends whose intimacy comes through on the album and in concert, Lallier has the typical light touch of contemporary French keyboardists, with unusual depth to the sound. The quartet --Benjamin Body on bass, Jeff Baud on trumpet, and Julie Saury on drums-- was solid, the drummer putting out the most energy in the two sets [the usual Quartet line-up features Donald Kontomanou on drums, but Saury more than held her own.] Julien tells me that other priorities came up this year to keep him off the festival circuit, but if you have a chance to see him in Paris or at one of the gigs listed on his website you won't be dissapointed by your evening. Lallier's playing has a virtuoso's touch in both the composition and the playing and that's a rare thing these days.
( www.julienlallier.com )

Copywrite Enfringement Anyone

Couldn't resist putting up this rather alternative version of Mickey Mouse that we saw at the contemporary arts museum Palais de Tokyo last night. I'm not sure how they get away with using the big eared one in such an 'excited' pose without Disney's lawyers come down on them like a ton of bricks. However for 2000 euros you can take one of these adorable mice back home with you! We sat out in the crazy 1920's courtyard cafe afterward and discussed possibilities...

My favourite jazz Bassist in Paris

Met with Tommasso Montagnani, the extraordinary bassist I played with last year to talk about recording my  my new jazz album in Paris. We had a coffee near his place in Montmartre, near Chateau Rouge Metro














(where they have cleaned up the street and kicked most of the junkies away!... I had to wait for him for 20 minutes and it makes it a lot nicer on the corner!)

He's a bassist and ethnomusicologist... which maybe explains some of his eclectic style... BUT he is going to Brazil to study the music of the Amazon Indians for six months and he leaves on the 6th of June and my dates for the recording are tentatively the 10th to the 14th! I have to talk to three other musicians still, since everybody left town for the Easter Vacations... so either I put it at the end of May for Tommasso, which gives me only four weeks to rehearse, or I find someone new (it's hard to find a good bassist!!) and put it even later in June to give us more time. The arrangements aren't easy, so it's going to take us a bit of work to get them together... I'll know more in a week when all the French musicians come back from Easter with the family....

Rock Stars under the Bridge and some very tight dresses at Le Tango in Paris

Tonight I'll be seeing Benoit Gil play at the Mano Bueno, but last night was a non-jazz evening. We started off at the Rock Star Karaoke at the new hot club that has been built into the walls of the Quai under the bridge Alexandre III.... you know the bridge, it's in every tourist photo of the city!

























I was lucky enough to be in the company of Lisa Pasold, Heather Stimmler and Nicole


















We were treated to a club that looked like it had been decked out by Saturday Night Fever's set decorator... and even better it had foosball and a view of the Eiffel Tower.




































And for the Kararock there was a series of hilarious cameo's by would-be rock stars.










































The band was great and doing their best to make everyone look good. It's all organized by a promoter who appears throughout the evening in various disguises. As we were leaving he appeared in the complete white top hat Alice Cooper outfit and sprayed the audience with fake blood. His site is sort of unnavigable on myspace... but you can try and find his upcoming events at http://www.myspace.com/ullmanncabarock . Normally this happens on a Sunday evening and often the cream of french rock musicians turn up to jam along with the band towards the end of the evening..

after that a quick and spectacular taxi ride along the quais past the Gare D'Orsay took us to Le Tango at Art et Metiers. It's a venerable institution in Paris's gay lifestyle.



















Saturday nights are open to all and for 7 euros you can enjoy the 1940's ambience, a truly amazing drag show




















and music that ranges from waltzes to pumping disco to spontaneous 'Madisons' where the entire dance floor suddenly divides up and does a line dance to 50's french pop music. We had stumbled in on Eurovision night and so we were treated to a medley of every fabulously awful winner in the last 20 years....

My Own Dawson City Yukon Angel Eyed Blues (Ok..it's not Paris, but Jazz Standards live everywhere...)

Poetry 'n Jazz in Paris Jazz Festival setting

Went to see William Parker at the Black Rebels Festival up at La Villette Jazz Festival in Paris, and I was AMAZED. The band he put together was stunning, AND it included spoken word by Amiri Baraka (who used to be Leroi Jones: Black Power/Beat poet extraordinaire). The premise was "The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayfield". Now, I bought a ticket because of Baraka, and it was great to see a the man in person, doing his thing (and though he's looking a bit like a Beat Yoda these days--he's 72 years old--he lived up to his fireball reputation). But the real thrill of the evening was the music. It's rare to see a band that's really on fire. And William Parker's musicians were exactly that. The sax and trumpet players, Darryl Foster and Lewis Barnes respectively, were the smoothest and most impeccably together players I've seen all year, and Dave Burrell on piano managed to sound delicate and insane at the same time (and when he plays solos, the man looks like he's wrestling a rhino). And the drummer, a guy named Hamid Drake, sounded like an entire samba band when he got going. For once poetry, pop, and jazz all mashed up together to create something fantastic. The rather, er, expressionistic photo shows a hat, which is Baraka, and a turquoise wristband, which is William Parker playing bass. All of this in the magical Cabaret Sauvage, which is an old dance "guingette" (a wooden circus tent, essentially) that was dismantled from just outside of Paris and installed by the canal in the Parc de la Villette.