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)
Archie Shepp, a living jazz legend from America needs little introduction. Saxophonist, pianist and vocalist, he has been enchanting audiences since the nineteen sixties with his powerful style with its clear soul and blues inspiration. He is accompanied here by pianist Tom McClung, who plays with his own group as well as performing solo and composing music for film, dance and theatre. The Mihály Dresch Quartet, one of the best-known Hungarian jazz groups, who also performed in concert at the Avignon Festival in 2001, joins them for an exceptional evening. The group has developed their own jazz language and this common ground bears the fruit of the seeds of Magyar folklore which are their own. The experience with Archie Shepp, whose presence seems to have helped the quarter to spread their wings, culminated in an album in 2002 called Hungarian Bebop.
Distribution
with : Archie Shepp, Tom McClung and Mihály Dresch Quartet
Production
Réalisation : Festival d'Avignon
avec le soutien de la : SACEM
Remerciements à : l'AJMI Avignon