During its vacation week, the Nice Premium team is happy to offer you a compilation of its best articles. For this second day, you will find the 5 most beautiful photo galleries.
First published on July 21, 2008, under the title “Stacey Kent and Georges Benson open the ball at the Nice Jazz Festival”.
Due to organizational changes, it is a real little village that you can discover in the Cimiez Arena. You would think you were back in Roman times. Wooden merchant stalls, banquet in the center of the garden, music in the Arena… everything suggests that the Arenas were transported for a week to the 1st century AD.
And yet, the music heard here is far from Roman music, it is jazz that takes center stage and the audience, although small in numbers (about 4,000 people, Saturday evening), clearly understood this.
Saturday, opening day, it was The Boogiemen who opened the evening on the magnificent Matisse stage. Through a show skillfully combining music, cabaret atmosphere and pre-war costumes, this Nice vocal jazz group swept the audience into the frenzy of the roaring twenties dance.
On the same stage an hour later, Jean Pierre Labador, known as El bobo, the undisputed master of the guitar, nominated for the 2008 Victoires de la Musique, played his strings accompanied by his intimate trio, before a very calm audience.
A few meters further on, authentic jazz rhythmed the Arenas. Archie Shepp was there giving voice and trombone. At 71 years old, this living legend still has a perfectly controlled vibrato in all its dimensions. The nostalgia of this music, so often copied but never equaled, was then present and so was the applause.
A small detour through Rufus Wainwright and his rather depressing folk, to which we nonetheless concede beautiful lyrics and a certain talent as a composer. As for Avishai Cohen in the Arenas, he is in true trance with his bass.
Making way for jazz’s next generation and it is female: headliner of this first evening, Stacey Kent, a smooth voice accompanied by four musicians including her husband on saxophone, takes the stage at 10:40 PM. Stacey has great style, elegance and she even sings in French, two Gainsbourg love songs and a very popular samba tune.
Sunday, much more people than the first day. The buzz of a real festival is there. The programming is more varied and the entrance price is lower (€41 instead of €51 the first evening).
Isotop and Till Brönner, two talents, two universes on the Matisse stage. The first, a graduate of the Nice Conservatory of Music, takes the best of current music to make it his own and transform it into an original form that he defines as “Electro Fusion”. The second is one of Germany’s best-selling trumpet players, his country of origin. Till Bronner draws his originality from a blend of classical and modernism that will lead him to revisit hits from German cinema of the 1920s, which he will orchestrate with a blend of string orchestras and a jazz quartet.
Around 9 PM it was Ibrahim Maalouf’s turn with his oriental electro jazz to convince the Arenas audience. Ibrahim Maalouf’s main source and musical influence lies in the depths of Arab musical tradition: improvisation. The audience loved it and amid thunderous applause, he returned for three more songs, before Barbara Hendricks continued with her voice that has made more than one tremble.
A change of scenery with the Nantes group, Hocus Pocus which seems to be a UFO in the current hip hop landscape. Their music incorporates real instruments. Hocus Pocus blends elements specific to hip hop with an instrumental sound influenced by jazz, soul and funk.
To close the evening beautifully, the great jazzman George Benson set the largest stage at the festival on fire. It was beautiful and terribly nostalgic.
NicePremium is a free, independent local news outlet.
Help us keep going by supporting our work from €5 per month.
