2023-09-18 23:44:05
“You are the fucking master!”, “!Thanks for your movies!” A small crowd mills about Woody Allen while crossing Casp Street from the ME Hotel and entering the Tivoli Theater through a side door. She has been waiting for him for a while to congratulate him and to show him her support. Barcelona is not Venice. There she presented her fiftieth film a few days ago, “Golpe de Luck”, while a group of demonstrators protested at the doors of the theater. asking the festival not to focus “on rapists”, in relation to the accusation of sexual abuse that his stepdaughter Dylan Farrow has maintained for years and that Allen has always denied. But here, not a #metoo sign, not a boo. If there is someone in Barcelona who wants to cancel Woody Allen, they have not bothered to show up.
The entrance to the stage also has its own thing. He director of the Voll-Damm Barcelona Jazz Festival presents the artist, which inaugurates no less than the 55th edition of the festival with two consecutive concerts and everything sold out. Applause… and no one appears. Silence. Another round of applause. Nothing. Laughter. Good humor reigns in the audience. If this were any other concert, it would be normal to assume that there was some setback. But Woody Allen is playing, so maybe this is a gag. Who knows. Third time’s the charm and now the New Orleans Jazz Band appears and will do the best they can, Allen announces, to entertain us with a night of ragtime, blues, music from brothels and music from churches. of the city where jazz was born. Music from another era recreated with poise, taste and rigor. The band knows the history of early jazz backwards and forwards. Woody Allen too. But his performance as a clarinetist is restricted. He is the first to recognize it. And his public, the first to apologize to him. This is not about music, of course.
In the New Orleans hubbub, where the soloists They intertwine, braiding melodies, each in their own way., Woody Allen’s clarinet sounds trembling to the point of neurosis, just like the musical expression of those broken characters that he has brought to the screen so many times. He plays in short, breathy snorts, as if hitting each note is almost painful, and then he becomes thoughtful. He only comes out of his reverie to negotiate with his trumpet player which song they will play next. They decide on a number that is pure nostalgia -”When I’m too old to dream I’ll have you to remember”-, and then they come back with the infallible “Para Vigo me voy”, which Eddy Davis, musical director of the band, who died in 2020, used to sing.
Everything sounds in its place, but the The mood in the room is getting colder.. The rapturous applause at the beginning goes from enthusiasm to courtesy until Allen takes the microphone to say goodbye and introduce his musicians and the audience, now, applauds wildly. As if he suddenly remembered that that wounded, snorting man who plays music from another time and has spent half a concert absorbed in his thoughts is the author of all those films that have made them so happy.
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