News: April 08
Posted April 22, 2008Giovanni Mirabassi and his brilliant trio (the Italian Gianluca Renzi, bass and the American Leon Parker on drums) are back from a very successful tour of Japan and Korea to promote their album “Terra Furiosa”, released in February. A new recording by this exceptional set-up is already under discussion and could be scheduled for the beginning of summer.
La Caravane Passe, the French based gypsy rock group which had their second album “Velkom Plèchti!” out here in France end of 2007, is about to be signed to Rounder Europe for an international release in the autumn, accompanied by a number of concert dates. Already starting their international conquest, the band are playing a number of international festivals this summer in Hungary (Tziget), Greece, Serbia, Morocco and Germany.
Jazz prodigy Yaron Herman trio, just back from a much acclaimed date at the Cully Jazz Festival in Switzerland, will be on release through American Sunnyside in the fall. The concert dates accompanying the US release are in the planning stages now.
Meanwhile, Yaron will do a solo concert at the German JazzAhead convention/festival to follow up on some great articles in the German specialized press and a lovely quote by Spiegel.online, the biggest weekly by far in Germany (1 million): “Yaron Herman, born in Israel and resident of France (considered a “wunderkind” by the national daily Libération) combines a sparkling technique with a jazzy, swing feel.” Herman’s tour schedule, which is bursting at the seams, demonstrates the quickly growing international popularity of this exceptional jazz pianist.
In the synchronisation contexts, some nice hits: the prolific “KUNG FU FIGHTING” composed by Carl Douglas in the 60ies, is part of the tv movie and DVD scheduled for release in 2008 of the theatre play “Arrête de pleurer Pénélope 2” (stop crying Penelope, part 2), but also of the new movie “Disco” that had one million entries in the first week of being shown in French cinemas, and of the very funny and well produced Lotus toilet paper tv spot that is on all the big channels since mid March.
In the “world music” context, the Asphalt Tango label from Berlin releases a new recording of their beautiful ’”Music from a Bygone Age” collection, giving us the opportunity to discover rare productions of the Rumanian Lautari (gypsy) musicians of the 60ies and 70ies – the Golden Age of gypsy music in Rumania.
The sensation of the moment on the Piranha label is a group from Marseille called Watcha Clan. The band’s new album, “Diaspora Hi Fi”, a contemporary and inspired mixture of sounds and music from all of the mediterranean coast, sung and rapped in Spanish, Hebrew, Arab, French… which they produced and licensed to Piranha, has great press and radio reactions here in France. After having held the top of the European World Music charts in March, they started their European tour in Eastern Europe and will move to the South of Europe next. In between, they will travel and perform in France, with a concert at the Paris venue La Maroquinerie on April 16, on the same bill as their prestigious predecessors,Transglobal Underground.
After a sold out concert at Salle Pleyel in Paris, Brad Mehldau releases a double live album recorded at the legendary Village Vanguard in New York.
Norwegian singer-songwriter Solveig Slettahjell and her musicians will come to Paris on June 23 to perform at the Sunset-Sunside Vocal Jazz Festival. She will sing her “Domestic Songs”, title of her new album on ACT, released on April 10. Still on ACT, the fantastic trio E_L_B (Peter Erskine, Nguyên Lê and Michel Benita) invites saxophonist Stéphane Guillaume for their new album “Dream Flight”, to be released in France on May 15.
They are touring : at the big jazz festival in Normandy, Jazz sous les Pommiers, you can find some great acts which we champion and support : La Fanfare Ciocarlia, brilliant brass ensemble from Rumania with their set of Gypsy Kings and Queens, and the fabulous Orchestra Baobab, which is also part of the great world music festival Musiques Métisses (started at about the same time as Métisse Music!) at Angoulême, in the Loire valley; as well as two American musicians of very different roots but both lit by great musicality and spirituality: Pura Fé and Mighty Sam McClain, who returns to Europe for the first time for a long while.