European Jazz Conference seeks out jazz’s future through enlightened education

The theme of this year’s European Jazz Conference, the major meeting of festival directors, promoters, bookers and agents hosted by the European Jazz Network (EJN), was creative music education.

Titled Illuminations the three-day event in Marseille, a city with a near permanent golden glow in the sky, asks many questions. How best to develop formal and informal tuition but also grow diversity in audiences are among the specific topics for discussion that involve a number of interesting speakers, from Palestinian singer-oud player Kamilya Jubran to American flautist Nicole Mitchell to French manager Judyth Babin. Her compatriot, saxophonist Raphael Imbert is also an important presence at the whole event insofar as he has the notable dual role of director of Marseille’s Pierre Barbizet Conservatory and bandleader-performer.    

While the numerous panels gave food for thought, a number of showcases of French artists kept the ears fuelled over two action-packed days at Palais Du Pharo, a well appointed multi-purpose building with a magnificent view of the Vieux Port, the stunning harbour that gives Marseille iconic status as a Mediterranean town that is also a gateway to North Africa and the Arab world. It was indeed a group steeped in this vital cultural richness that proves to be one of the highlights of the many live performances. Sarab blows away the audience by way of high energy, stylistic range and impressive standards of musician in a 30-minute gig (as are all the showcases, given that they are in between panel meetings) that gives welcome meaning to the term ‘short, sharp shock.’ Franco-Syrian vocalist Climene Zarkan has a captivating voice, marked by shades of subtlety as well as bursts of confrontational energy while guitarist Baptiste Ferrandis and trombonist Robinson Khoury are ear catching soloists in an electric band that veers from heavy rock to Arab folk to funk in tightly mapped shape-shifting compositions.

France as a cultural melting pot is furthered emphasized by an acoustic duo that is more gentle but not devoid of passion. Franco-Syrian flautist-vocalist Naissam Jallal and double bassist Claude Tchmatichian play a set full of graceful laments, often invigorated by the former’s soaring quarter-tone lines and the latter’s powerful bowing. Two become one musical whole in music that benefits from an astute use of space and silence as well as the expressive richness of each artist. Like the iconic singer-actor Charles Aznavour, Tchamtichian is of Armenian descent and a younger player who shares the same heritage is pianist Yessai Karapetian (pictured below). He leads a polished quintet featuring two haunting traditional woodwinds and duduk deployed on songs steeped in vivid sense of nostalgia and longing. If one were looking for other interesting ways in which the past, both musically and culturally, continues to shape the present then several artists fitted the bill.

The arrestingly oddball combo Nout, comprising flute, drums and electric harp and a shower of braying electronics, was almost Jethro Tull re-imagined as a prog power trio that has deep sea depth charge let alone an aqualung while Marion Rampal, the Marseille born singer who made a sizeable impression as the guest of Archie Shepp and Jason Moran at the London Jazz Festival a few years ago gives an interesting take on jazz-folk-pop, blending smart covers of Dylan with her own well written tunes in French. Also investigating classic ballads but with notably different results is the quartet Poetic Ways, which features saxophonist Raphael Imbert and Celia Kameni, a vocalist with a darkly beautiful, slightly Nina-like delivery, as well as renowned drummer Anne Paceo The band’s adaptations of gospel, folk and blues, including anthem such as ‘He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands’ and ‘Black Is The Colour Of My True Love’s Hair’ is pleasant enough but the gig goes to another level when they imaginatively reprise two icons of French music, pop singer Leo Ferré  and classical composer Gabriel Fauré. Using stimulus outside of the jazz canon is a well-established praxis and Papanosh, arguably one of the most original bands in creative music made in Europe in the past couple of decades excel with their spin on the writing of American author Jim Harrison, which has a string of twists and turns, rhythmically and harmonically, that exemplify the strength of a two-horn quintet that nudges the vocabulary of Ortnette and Old And New Dreams down new pathways.

To close the event a living legend of French jazz, bass clarinetist-clarinetist Michel Portal leads an international supergroup comprising Serbian-French pianist Bojan Z, British trumpeter Yazz Ahmed and Norwegian guitarist Eivind Aarset, which, although not quite living up to its promise on paper, has some breathtaking moments, particularly when the leader’s horn is cast against fluid African rhythms. In any case Marseille, and particularly its Association Jazz Des Cinq Continents, which partnered EJN, made a sizeable impression as a dynamic, historic city that has much light to shed on the key cultural and political subjects of encounter and exchange.