Jazz In Marciac Festival: Day 5

Local students took the stage for much of day five of the 28th annual Jazz In Marciac Festival, putting on a series of small- and large-ensemble performances in the town square. Early shows with younger students weren't necessarily remarkable, but the amount of noteworthy work from those of high school and college age was highly disproportional for a 1,200-person, 13th century rustic village in southwest France.

Then again, not many villages of such size host festivals attracting a total attendance of 180,000 and a large roster of the world's most famous artists.

That cultural immersion got a further education-oriented boost with the opening of the Ateliers d'Initiation a la Musique De Jazz program at the College De Marciac in 1993. Large numbers of local students participate to some extent in its activities and the roster of French artists performing at the festival features an unsurpringly high number whose experience includes time there.

"In another town you don't make as much music, but it is an ambient feeling here," said Fransois-Xavier Cecillion, 15, whose tenor sax playing during the day and a more informal show earlier in the week ranked among the standout efforts. Although he plans to study medicine, he said music will always be a key secondary part of his life.

Among the program's concepts of the program, according to Marciac publications describing it (translations courtesy of the amazingly useful Babel Fish translator from AltaVista):

· "This initiative of the college of Marciac marries perfectly the idea of the creation of rural cultural spaces in relation to the teaching world."

· Wynton Marsalis, godfather of the workshops, systematically recalled at the time of its master classes that the music is played initially like a play. With each one, (the goal is) to find blooming personal likely to help it."

· "Meetings with famous jazzmen, concerts and regular hearings are organized throughout the year. Within the framework of the festival, the workshops allow the pupils to express themselves in public under the sponsorship of prestigious musicians."

Bringing in renowned talent is possible because "it is a small town, but with big funding" from a support association, according to an instructor helping translate some student interviews for me. About 200 students attend the college, which offers several hours weekly of instruction for various grade levels in addition to regular academics. (There is some uncertainty, due to translation shortcomings on my part, about the percentage of participation among all Marciac school-age students and how many come from elsewhere in the region, but overall exposure is clearly well above the norm).

Younger students started the performances on day five at 11 a.m., performing standards pretty much as one would expect, with most of the players getting opportunities to do solos mostly short and safe. There were also the usual acknowledging nods and exchanged words in the audience for a few students of promising talent, including a tentative-looking-but-assertive female vocalist on "Summertime" and a boy with a butch- cut soloing on clarinet.

Real showcasing began at noon.

The first of two lunch-hour concerts featured Cecillion as part of the sextet La Bande A Petri, whose early evening performance of fusion standards in a small nearby courtyard on day two was full of loose-yet-energetic soloing and casual interplay. Their day five performance, leaning more toward standards like "Take Five," didn't hit the same level as they seemed more tentative due to larger setting and/or compositions. Cecillion tossed in some abrupt high-notes to spike up educated lines, but without the speed and attitude of the earlier show. Similarly, alto saxophonist Antoine Fily-de-Redon delivered what might be called Post-Bop Lite - all the ideas were there, but less of them as he progressed through solos at a delicate pace.

Pianist Charles Mathieu-Dessay did well delivering some moody passages and showed improvisational skills beyond the music, unable to get two electric keyboards working before finally settling in at the third and final one. Once there he showed quick adaptability with strong, dark tone-shaping on a funk-oriented composition, punctuated with some complex chord stabbing. The more modern flair of the piece seemed to suit all of the players better in general, reviving some of the earlier show's sprit and earning them applause for an encore (a rumbling Latin number also fitting them well). Cecillion said he will try to send me digital recordings of their performances; if so an effort will be made to post them online for downloading.

Some of the day's best moments came during the second noon-hour performance by the Ainama sextet, which started outside the usual range of standards with Kenny Garrett's breakthrough soul ballad "Sing A Song Of Song." They concluded with an extended-length Latin original, "Soledad," with Jean P. Bauzerand, 16, burning on a demonstrative congos solo and drummer Jean Pascal Bauzerand, 15 - they're probably related, but I wasn't 100 percent clear on this - kicking out a modern across-the-kit solo that represented the first real workout on that instrument among the students.

Given the liveliness of the piece, it was a shock having saxophonist Carla Gaudre, 18, explain the composition is about solitude.

"At the beginning it is melancholy, but (picks up) because we love Salsa," she explained.

Music tastes among many of the students seem typical, geared more to rock than jazz, and many including Gaudre said they are likely to pursue careers outside the field. But she said the jazz studies provide an important cultural and historical foundation.

"Everybody doesn't like jazz, but after the college we can choose our proper way," she said. "I will study something else because it is very difficult to live off music."

Perhaps the biggest compliment that can be given to the afternoon concerts is most passed what I call the "casual listen" test - meaning it's not something a casual listener would immediately recognize as a student performance compared to other acts during the week.

Probably the best of the them (remember, parents, we're talking personal opinions here) was a mid-afternoon appearance by the Combo 3eme La Febeme, a quartet whose composition "3 P'tits Tours" is among the highlights of a CD recently released by the college (see below for details). They stumbled on the opening of "Blue Monk," but drummer Theo Lanau made up for it at the end with a thick, loud and modernistic solo. The "3 P'tits Tours" finale started out as freeform Miles Davis-era fusion with clarinetist Jean Dousteyssier blowing phrases in a seemingly controlled direction, only to inject a regular series of quirky deviations that somehow screamed "attitude" as the storyline progressed. From there it evolved through a few places before arriving at a Klezmer-style finish that continued accelerating in pace through the end of Dousteyssier's over-the-top finish.

Two large-scale ensembles, with a lot of now-familiar faces taking the stage, wrapped up the student portion of the day. Of them, the Classe De 3eme performance was probably superior, allowing small subsections to showcase their talent rather than trying to work in everybody at once. The subsequent Big Band De College offered some decent moments, but they were fewer and shorter, and much of the time the ensemble was simply covering the compositions' forms.

For many, the evening would be spent listening to the all-star lineup of jazz talent, including the first of two appearances by Marsalis. In other small towns, that might be an awe-inspiring or once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but saxophonist Benjamin Dousteyssier, a graduate of the college said planning to continue music studies at a conservatory in Paris later this year, said regular exposure to such talent makes it easier to appreciate and interact with them.

"For Marciac it is very good, a true college where we can learn the music and hear the music at the Chapiteau," he said. He said with so many accomplished musicians in such a small town "it is like everybody here speaks with everybody."

Coming up on Day 6: Opening weekend and festival "godfather" Wynton Marsalis.

Of note:

Some albums have been recorded at the college, including the recently released Lile Au Jazz featuring students from the classes of 2003 through 2005. A brief assessment is the 13-song collection of mostly traditional standards is a good portrait of regional talent of about average quality for a student album (keep in mind others generally come from much larger schools), but not an undiscovered gem. The bodies of the songs generally possess an ensemble-like sound associated with student bands, and individual performances and audio engineering is a bit uneven. There are a few standout songs, notably "3 P'tits Tours" performed by the Combo De 3eme 2005, which isn't to the level of their live festival performance noted above, but about as close as recorded work is likely to get. There's also some forgettable moments such as the big band sound of "Born To Be Wild" which, a couple of decent funk solos aside, sounds like marching band music for a parade. It appears information about the CD is available from the Voy Jazz foundations that supports the college at http://voyjazz.free.fr (it's in French, but doing a Google Search for "Voy Jazz" and using the "translate this page" function works reasonably well). There's also sound samples from an album recorded during the 1999/2000 school year at the site.

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