The Jazz à La Villette festival opens this Thursday in Paris with a rich and eclectic program spanning free jazz, soul, hip-hop, and Afro-Caribbean rhythms. One of this year’s standout events is a tribute to Ornette Coleman, whose landmark 1959 album The Shape of Jazz to Come will be reinterpreted on Saturday at the Philharmonie by a symphonic ensemble and a high-profile jazz lineup led by Denardo Coleman, the late musician’s son.
The reinterpretation this Saturday at the Philharmonie of The Shape of Jazz to Come, a cult album by multi-instrumentalist Ornette Coleman released in 1959, will be a highlight of the Jazz à La Villette festival in Paris, which kicks off on Thursday.
This album, extremely avant-garde at the time, caused a stir upon its release. Ornette Coleman, saxophonist, flutist, violinist, and composer introduced new harmonic rules and a great freedom of improvisation, laying one of the first foundations of what would be called free jazz.
“It’s musically very advanced,” said Frank Piquard, co-programmer of the festival, to AFP. Denardo Coleman, Ornette Coleman’s son and longtime drummer, is behind this project, which has already been presented in Germany and Poland with different lineups. “He asked six arrangers to work on the six tracks of the album, writing for a symphony orchestra into which he integrates a jazz group,” Piquard explained.
A top-tier jazz group, featuring trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire and saxophonist Isaiah Collier, will take part.
Several musicians from the new generation, featured in the festival lineup, still claim the legacy of free jazz, the penultimate major jazz revolution before the arrival of electronic elements.
Among them is Isaiah Collier, a Chicago-based musician, who will present his new project Parallel Universe, where jazz meets gospel and soul music.
Another unique collaboration will bring together jazz-fusion saxophonist Donny McCaslin and the French progressive rock band Ishkero.
“This multiplicity, these constant hybridizations, have always existed and are part of the history of this music,” Frank Piquard emphasized.
Jazz à La Villette also keeps a close eye on soul music and hip-hop, while incorporating electronic influences.
For instance, Jeff Mills, one of the kings of techno, will perform Tomorrow Comes the Harvest, a trance-like musical project created a few years ago alongside an Indian tabla player and a synthesizer player.
Jalen Ngonda, meanwhile, is one of the latest ambassadors of a more classic and sophisticated soul music, in the tradition of Tamla Motown legends such as Smokey Robinson and Marvin Gaye.
The festival also maintains a focus on African and Afro-Caribbean music.
This year, they will be celebrated through the Mandinka songs of Malian artist Salif Keita, Nigerian Seun Kuti, who continues the afrobeat tradition, a blend of jazz, funk, and Yoruba rhythms invented by his father Fela and the Cuban funk of Cimafunk.
Jazz à La Villette also returns to the Espace Charlie Parker under the Grande Halle de La Villette, which had been requisitioned last year for the Olympic Games.
With AFP
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