What is there in common between a royal bastide in the Gers, Pierre Boulez and the largest city in the USA? The answer is to be found in this programme, which is an invitation to travel between two jazz hotspots: Marciac, a Gascony village hosting the world-renowned Jazz in Marciac festival, and New York, the world epicenter of this music. Our guide is himself a frequent traveller and connoisseur of this itinerary: composer and pianist Hervé Sellin’s tentet offers us a transatlantic encounter between French terroir and New York effervescence, including an astonishing creation for the Printemps des Arts de Monte-Carlo.
From his long experience at the Jazz in Marciac festival, or ‘JIM’ to its friends, Hervé Sellin wanted to preserve a memory in the form of ‘jazz tableaux’, drawing on the soul of the place, between green hills, winding rivers and the majestic architectural heritage of the town founded under the reign of Philippe Le Bel, now a temple to jazz. The opening track, Les deux clochers, evokes the two emblematic towers of the bastide, the symbol of the village that will guide the steps of this musical journey, before setting sail on the three rivers surrounding Marciac in the piece entitled Entre Boués, Laüs et Arros. The suppleness of the intertwined melodies and the rhythmic calmness of the music take us through the Gers landscapes, celebrating the natural elements that shape Marciac’s identity.
Was it just a dream? We are already on the other side of the Atlantic with “It’s All in Your Mind”, the first part of Tryptic, a three-movement suite commissioned by New York’s Jazz At Lincoln Center festival (J.A.L.C.). It steeps us into the modernity and dynamism of the city affectionately known as “The Big Apple”, full of harmonic colors and stylistic contrasts. The steeples of Marciac swap their silhouettes for those of Manhattan’s skyscrapers, and a new character dances in: Wynton Marsalis, American master trumpeter and composer, artistic director of J.A.L.C., and godfather of the Marciac festival. Hervé Sellin pays tribute to his friend from across the Atlantic on Little Boy Play Chess. From Gascony to New York, the road is shorter than you’d think for jazzophiles!
However, it’s a more unexpected bridge that brings us back to Marciac, with a Boulezian stage entitled Toutes griffes dehors. Taking up the phrase used by actor and director Jean-Louis Barrault in the 1950s to define Pierre Boulez’s personality, Hervé Sellin once again demonstrates the inspiration he can draw from particular circumstances – the unpublished work is offered to the Printemps des Arts festival in Monte-Carlo – and key figures in France’s musical heritage. The correspondence here is to be found in the number twelve, like the twelve notes of the twelve-tone series that inspired Boulez’s Douze Notations (1945), each of which consists of twelve bars; it was from this work that Hervé Sellin composed his own, seeing in it the sign of the blues, whose form is also usually composed of twelve bars. A symmetry reminiscent of the remarkable architecture of the Marciac region and its arcades… Do blues and Boulez go well together? Although the French master’s ‘claws’ have not spared jazz, Sellin does not hold this against him, and never ceases to build bridges where some would like to erect walls. This is further proof – if need be – of the spirit of innovation shared by the proponents of bold, modern music, whether they are headed for New York – Boulez succeeded Leonard Bernstein at the helm of his Philharmonic Orchestra – or for Marciac.
We are now back in the South-West of France, preparing to celebrate swing in all its forms, like every summer for over forty years. Hervé Sellin dedicates Bouncing with JIM to the entire Jazz in Marciac festival team, and closes the program with a real ‘fête de village’ at La maison du roi, a final tribute to the royal bastide and its no less grandiose festivities.
Throughout this journey in jazzland, the pleasure of collective play and orchestral interplay is at the heart of the memories Hervé Sellin conjures up to immortalize the emblematic jazz venues of Marciac and New York, not as pious images but as living tableaux. From one festival to the next, from one creation to the next, the adventure continues: conquered lands give way to new spaces to conquer, new figures to honor, and new landscapes to paint with sound.
Manon Fabre
