Jazz Export Days 2023

Jazz Export Days
Jazz Sous Les Pommiers
Coutances, France
May 15-17, 2023

Jazz Export Days was a music biz event inserted into an actual public festival, the long-running (42 years!) and highly-regarded Jazz Sous Les Pommiers, in Coutances, a small town in the north-west Normandy region. It's organised by the relatively new CNM (Centre National De La Musique), which sprouted just before the first lockdown gates crashed down. The concept is to globally spread the word of French jazz, its scene, its artists, its venues, its festivals and its record labels. Using the 'global' word, they really take this seriously. There are several similar European events, inviting local delegates, but JED goes further, wider, drawing in promoters from major festivals in the Americas and South-East Asia. It's not often we get to run into guests from Argentina, Mexico, Indonesia, Australia, South Korea, Japan, China, Ecuador and Brazil. In the UK and the US, for instance, an initiative such as this is extremely unlikely. The CNM is underlining the priority given to arts/culture in France. The Pompidou Centre will undergo a five-year renovation via government funding, while London's Southbank Centre is left naked to the elements of decay.

All of the guests gathered together in Paris, opening their first day with a presentation of CNM, and an attempt to sketch in the entire scene of French jazz, in most of its facets. Not so bad, as it managed to give a crash course in clubs, festivals and record labels, filling in the general infrastructure details. Then there was the five or six-hour drive to Normandy!

JED isn't a private event, or at least not its actual gigs. The two showcase afternoons took place in the Magic Mirrors spiegeltent, as part of the public programme of Jazz Sous Les Pommiers. A Monday evening spectacular in the Eglise Abbatiale of the famed Mont Saint-Michel was not only open to the public, but was given free admission status. The non-public part of the JED programme involved a series of meetings with artists and music biz professionals. The vast majority of the guests represented venues or festivals (including Jarasum Jazz Festival, Montréal Jazz Festival, Jazz At Lincoln Center, Jazzkaar, Budapest Music Center, Jazz Station, April Jazz Festival, North Sea Jazz Festival, Jazztopad, etc.). There was also a small clutch of journalists in attendance.

Émile Parisien and Vincent Peirani performed in the Abbey of Mont Saint-Michel. Once inside and underway, their gig had a similar ambiance to many such shows given in churches and cathedrals, with the acoustics of a high-vaulted setting adding to the majesty of the music, although taking away much of its potential intimacy. It was the arrival approach that was completely spectacular, driving then walking towards the looming Mont Saint-Michel, which stands uncannily alone, particularly when the tides are out. Then there was the long climb up circling stairs, to the topmost Abbey perch, where the gig took place. Parisien and Peirani are by now a very familiar duo act, their rapport certified by years of virtuoso combination. Parisien played seated, which lent a fresh character to his dancing feet accompaniment. Peirani is customarily seated anyway. Their set was around the length of a compact disc's full capacity, which was about the right amount for this evening.

On Tuesday, the first afternoon of JED showcase gigs featured four sets, with the same number following on the Wednesday. The trio Nout opened, a band already familiar from last year's Jazzdor-Berlin festival. They are not particularly jazzy, operating closer to the rock portal, with their flute, harp and drums subject to heavy fuzz-distortion effects. They produced a lilting froth at first, but this soon grew into a heavy burst, cutting dramatically to a pedals-off acoustic sound. This wasn't an isolated trick, though, as Nout repeated the device quite a few times, highlighting purist flute and harp phrases. Another section was even more violent, but lacking the distortion, roaming more out of the free improvisation tradition. But then they made a swerve towards a heavy cosmic chug, straight off an old Hawkwind record.

Laurent Bardainne & Tigre D'Eau Douce (the band name sounds better in French) followed. This quintet had a fluidity largely provided by Hammond organ, crafting a swirling, nonchalant groove, their drummer embellishing with background vocals. Bardainne's tenor saxophone was soft and fruity, but picked up for the faster second number, pumped with shaker and hi-hat action. Drummer Philippe Gleizes and percussionist Fabe Beaurel Bambi made a locked connection, with the latter soloing hard on djembe, followed by a spotlight turning on the former. This band hit many clichéd points, but did so effectively, sometimes getting partway to Afrobeat.

The Théo Girard Trio had the bassist joined by Antoine Berjeaut (trumpet) and Antonin Leymarie (drums), working in a more abstract free-form fashion. A muted horn led the exploratory mission, but the trumpet's strength pushed the group sound further when crying straight out of its naked bell. This was the most introverted act during the showcase sets.

The first afternoon concluded with Ishkero, all members under 30 years old, and bred in the scene around La Gare in Paris, that city's recently opened (well, around five years back) hotbed for rising stars of innovation. Organic and mechanoid commingled in the drumming, humanly looping and leaping. The electric guitar had a nasal pinch, and Ishkero favoured mellowdies, mostly interpreted by an equally spread palette of instruments. A flute flooded quite loudly, then a Fender Rhodes solo began to ascend, chased by the bass and drums. Ultimately, this crew played conventional fusion, skilfully.

Half of Wednesday's showcase acts can be considered as having already been discovered, as singer Camille Bertault and pianist Eve Risser both have extensive touring, recording and festival experience. Rouge is a piano trio featuring Madeleine Cazenave, making classical moves figure in jazz, initiating dignified cycles, full of patterning progressions. Solos were bold, dramatic and doomy, rising out of a general sparseness, accompanied by bowed bass and soft mallets. Cazenave prepared her piano strings with her hand, adjusting her own reverb effects on her console. She used strips of masking tape to produce an imaginative harpsichord treatment, the bass and drums becoming more conventionally jazzed.

Bertault is best caught live, to experience her mischievous personality and on-the-hoof creativity. Her songs are accessible, but she inserts just enough derailing humour and experiment to tilt them towards quirkiness. She looped her voice to make a quick song that turned out to be "My Favourite Things," sung in French. Joined by drums, upright bass, Moog, trumpet, piano and keyboards (these just being played by four multi-taskers), she issued short scatting solos, then rapped a number, followed by making a scat-rap hybrid. Her "New York" song captured the city's essence well, an impersonation with humour.

With the 30-minute set limitation, it was Eve Risser's Red Desert Orchestra who suffered the most. This is a large group, with much to say, both within thematic parts and in a solo frame. The compositions are mostly extended, so it was quite a feat to provide a condensed version that neatly gauged its own running time. Transcending the limitations, Risser provided the best showcase set, this gig surrounded by a full touring datesheet. The music blended twisting moderne jazz with jagged West African instrumentation and melodies, all of its elements knotted and tangled together in a highly complicated relationship. Also, extremely danceable. The horns emanated a choral calm, but Risser's music soon became heavily percussive, with Moog-ey electronics, foundry guitar and prepared piano, as the composer dragged a thick drumstick across her strings. This was an Afro-cakewalk, sounding like "Afro Black," Sun Ra's skeletal space song. Not a second was wasted in the arrangements, always inserting a wily turn or twist. An ebbing and flowing of diverse elements of varying densities set up forwardness for the piano, balafon and djembe, united in their percussive roles. A hairbrush was used on the guitar. Another stylistic precedent could be the various Moiré Music outfits of saxophonist Trevor Watts in the 1980s. This crawling, wheezing Sahara train made its organic churn, as Risser occasionally conducted from her piano, usually to signal volume levels, and singing too. The RDO played what seemed like one piece, and it could happily have continued growing interminably.

There was one last rousing discovery, with the afternoon's final band. The Arnaud Dolmen Quartet showed what it was like to be fully fired up for a flashing 30-minute illustration of all their strengths. This made a few of the other sets seem, by comparison, quite complacent, particularly as this Magic Mirrors tent was full to capacity with an enthusiastic crowd. Drummer Dolmen's band featured a classic combination of tenor saxophone, piano and bass, playing direct, solid modern jazz, with not much gwo ka involved (the leader hails from Guadeloupe), aside from when he briefly sang or chanted. The second number was a racer, with muscular tenor playing from Francesco Geminiani, running into a drum solo, Dolmen now modelling sounds on Guadelupian hand drums, within an early 1960s jazz style. Matters rapidly became heated, as Leonardo Montana delivered a flyaway piano solo. The entire set was suffused with a desperate energy, as though Dolmen believed it would be his last time on stage. Thankfully, he will soon have further opportunities to shine.

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