Throughout the Festival there will be a number of musical interludes provided by jazz composers and musicians. Because of the way it masters gestures - at the same time a fundamental and liberating act - improvised music is echoed in the work of Josef Nadj who wants to bring attention to this particular musical territory.
“Ever since I was a teenager, I have really been attracted to this music and to the jazz musicians who I met during my regular visits to jazz clubs. They had to feature in this Festival because this improvised music has been such a part of my life. I have always been fascinated by the freedom in this approach and by the incredible capacity for inventiveness and exchange in just one instant. It is a real common language which enables musicians who don't know each other, often from different cultures, to communicate and create right away. They prove, if it is necessary to do so, that free and genuine spaces do exist which respect ‘otherness' in the quality of exchanges, the cross-overs, ultimately the fusion, that come out of these encounters.
Their jazz has other influences, from traditional music from the East to contemporary, without forgetting the origins of jazz, the blues.
Every musician is at the same time, playing an instrument and composing. That's how jazz is so open and has maintained a space that resists, that is far from banal, that preserves and expresses a gesture of pure research, that is always open to open to new possibilities, to creation. “(Josef Nadj, interviewed by Irène Filiberti)
Akosh S., who performs in concert on 18th July, will play a duet with French cellist, improviser and composer, Joëlle Léandre, one of the leading figures of new European music.
With her classical and contemporary music training she has played with the Ensemble Intercontemporain under Pierre Boulez, as well as with Merce Cunningham and John Cage (who composed specially for her) and with some of the great names of jazz and impro like Derek Beley, Anthony Braxton, Steve Lacy, Fred Frith, John Zorn etc.. She has written copiously for dance, theatre and undertaken several multi-discipline performances. Szilárd Mezei, a jazz violonist and composer born in Vojvodinia joins the group. He has often performed in Josef Nadj's works and plays in Asobu.
Distribution
with : Akosh S. et Joëlle Léandre, avec Szilárd Mezei
Production
Réalisation : Festival d'Avignon
avec le soutien de la : SACEM
Remerciements à : l'AJMI Avignon