2023-08-06 13:48:44
The trumpet is an instrument of dialogue. Two great artists demonstrated this in the last days of the Marciac jazz festival, which ends this Sunday, August 6. Friday evening, Raynald Colom bonhomie led a spirited quintet. The day before, Wynton Marsalis had conducted with false nonchalance a scintillating septet.
Both opened their concert with a solo deploying all the facets of their instrument. Clear and powerful features, like an injunction to listen; subtle breath variations that nuance the brilliance; jerky tirades from the velocity of the fingers on the valves; dragging slides like a scholarly rambling.
Like a river that nothing stops
Each his own style, each his paw, the time of a concert and tours conducive to the exploration of new sounds, new musical registers. A major figure in American jazz, general and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York, Wynton Marsalis develops fluid and powerful music like an unstoppable river. Solos, duets, trios and tutti follow one another in a metronomic rhythm. The cohesion of the group allows the brass – trumpet, saxophone, flute, trombone – to rise in flamboyant breakaways.
When he’s not playing, the maestro, dressed in a pale blue suit, sits on a high stool, leans on the piano and follows with an approving pout the convolutions of his partners. We perceive that no place is left to the superfluous.
Trained in France and living in Catalonia, Raynald Colom rather seeks to break distances, especially with the public. A beret on his head, an apple green jacket on his shoulders, he sometimes disappears on stage to let the melody of the saxophone or the trepidation of the drums be heard. He rhythms in his hands and his slender body, the opening of a piece. The sets go by, immersing the audience in flamenco, swing, New Orleans, etc. colours.
Trumpet and saxophone, complicity
During the two concerts, the dialogue was particularly playful between the trumpet and the saxophone. These two instruments differ in their timbre and their temperament, but they can prove to be profoundly complicit. Wynton Marsalis gets along wonderfully with Victor Goines, a companion who frequently accompanies him on his tours. Raynald Colom found in Francesco Cafiso a high-level partner giving, over the course of his performance, a growing breadth to his instrument. Duos in unison, mischievous replies, virtuoso emulations: the breakaways blaze like the flames of a bonfire.
Spruce, dazzling, silky, vibrant, brassy, harmonious, the trumpet also lends itself to experiences that tear it away from its fundamental characteristics. This is the work to which Yoann Loustalot is engaged, in a quest presented on Tuesday August 1 at L’Astrada, a permanent performance hall in the village of Marciac.
Surrounded by a guitarist and a drummer, the musician uses a computer to introduce new sounds. Holding his instrument in one hand, strumming the synthesizer with the other, he develops haunting, minimalist music, playing on repetitions. Doubled or even tripled by electronic sounds, the notes of the trumpet serve as a matrix for music approaching the world of disc jockeys, but on dreamlike and poetic compositions.
“Resist Shrinkage”
The important thing, confided Wynton Marsalis in the middle of his concert, is to “Don’t lose the ability to dream big things”. “You have to struggle to learn, learn, learn and resist the risk of shrinkage. » Jazz offers this possibility, in particular because improvisation plays a fundamental role in it. Point of support for new explorations, or fruitful source for music from elsewhere, it constantly invites openness.
It is this state of mind that Jazz in Marciac carries. And that the trumpet of Wynton Marsalis, honorary president of the festival, sounds at each edition.
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