Which jazz concert in Avignon ?

From July 31 to August 4, 2019, there are the five days of jazz event expected by all fans to live outdoors, moments of intense musicality.

For this 28th edition, the program is still rich and varied with Hailey Tuck, Emile Parisien and Michel Portal, and Rymden.

From July 31, also follow the not to be missed Tremplin Jazz, the free European young talent contest open to everyone for two evenings.

During the opening night, Avignon Jazz Festival invites up-and-coming artists, perhaps the future great names of tomorrow’s jazz.

This year, it’s a young 28-year-old singer, Hailey Tuck, who has imposed a unique voice and personality in the world of vocal jazz in recent years. Her first album “Junk”, was released in 2018 under the direction of Larry Klein, the famous producer of Madeleine Peyroux and Melody Gardot among others … Native of Texas, she spent her childhood cradled by the jazz of the 30s, bathed in the sensual atmosphere of black and white films and dreaming of Paris where she has lived for ten years. Her Louise Brooks haircut, her vintage look, and her eccentric temperament should make you want to come and see her on the Cloister of the Carmes.

Then, Parallel Society Quintet (Ireland), this quintet, created in Dublin in 2017, expresses the fusion of jazz that brings together young musicians from Ireland, Germany and Japan. Its leader and composer, Jan Henrik Rau, on guitar, draws his inspiration from a very eclectic field to summon hip-hop, pop, grunge, classical, Eastern music and modern jazz … Mixing acoustic and electronic sounds, each composition claims its originality.

Artist of the year at the Victoires du Jazz 2014, saxophonist Emile Parisien smooths the boundaries of styles by taking his sources in both traditional jazz and free jazz. The album released in 2016 was crowned “Album Sensation of the Year” at the 2017 Victoires du Jazz, “The sfumato blurs the contours … we are blurring the tracks”. Tonight, the quintet invites for the occasion a living legend of jazz, Michel Portal, singular and unclassifiable musician, as remarkable in the classical repertoire as in jazz and always in search of exchange with all possible musical personalities. Even if 47 years separate them, these two musicians break with the same generosity the formulas and the clichés established, and invite us in a universe mixed of sound poetry, joyful and intriguing.

Sunday, August 4, 8:30 pm, “Rymden”, space in Swedish, is the meeting of two emblematic formations of European jazz e.s.t. and New Conception of Jazz. These two groups helped produce some of the albums and concerts that projected the music of the 90s into the new millennium. Their influence has been profound and can still be felt today in the emergence of new talent. We had hosted Bugge Wesseltoft in 2005 and in August 2008, we wanted to invite the trio e.s.t, but unfortunately the pianist Esbjörn Svensson disappeared in June. This is the return of Bugge in the format of the trio, with a complex game enriched with subtle electronic manipulations between piano and Rhodes, supported by the inevitable rhythm section of the late Esbjörn Svensson Trio.
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Full program on the festival website.