A night out listening to jazz with a couple of friends... something I've been looking forward to for a long time... Desney even scheduled our holidays so as to allow me to be back in time to go to the concert. Was it worth it? Difficult to say.
The Salle Pleyel is an absolutely beautiful concert hall. It is generally used for classical concerts and it has recently been completely renovated. The décor is quite nice with a certain Art Nouveau feel to it with some very modern touches. However, unfortunately, the seating feels like it has been redesigned by the same people who do the seating on cheap airlines. Where we were seated, although quite well-placed visually (2nd balcony - front row - looking directly over the stage), there was enough leg room for Billy Barty. It was really quite unbearable by the end of the 2-hour performance. The acoustics were surprisingly bad for a concert hall meant for... well... concerts.
The Erik Truffaz Quartet was pretty much as I expected. I have 4 or 5 of his discs and I've listened to them often. I knew what I was in for. The music can probably be referred to as "Space Jazz" although many would call it "Noo Jazz" or "New Jazz". It's a mixture of a lot of different styles, involves a reasonable amount of elecontrica and sampling and mixes jazz backgrounds with hip-hop and pop vocals. I thought I would be asleep by the end of the second song. Fortunately it got a bit better from there on...
The Salle Pleyel has got to be one of the worst placed for a jazz quartet, electronic or accoustic, to perform. The sound was just plain unbalanced and annoying and from where we were the musicians were dots on a blue stage. This turned out to be probably one of the more boring jazz concerts I've been to in a while. But it was still enjoyable. Truffaz mimics Miles' later days in many ways including his stance (head bowed low when playing) and his balladic playing. His breathiness reminds me of Ben Webster. But it doesn't play as well on the trumpet as it did on the sax. When he played he was nice to listen to; nothing overly impressive and his solos didn't get much applause; nice but seemingly lacking for the headliner. The worst part of the evening, for me personally, was the new English singer he's hooked up with, Ed Harcourt, who every time he performed really brought the mood down to a bizarre combination of sleepiness and annoyance. Unfortunately he performed on a quite a few songs. It was great to finally see Nya perform live. I've heard him on several of Truffaz' discs and it was fun to see him performing. He's wonderfully smooth and passionate.
But the real discovery of the evening for me, and what made the whole concert worthwhile (in addition to the company), was the drummer: Marc Erbetta. He was absolutely excellent: kept the night moving; varied his rhythms and styles wonderfully; had solos which didn't sound like drum solos and were not intrusive; just simply a pleasure!
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However the real purpose of the evening, for me, was to actually go out and listen to some live jazz with a couple who actually enjoy this sort of thing. Desney stayed home as she would have been beyond bored at the sort of music and instead of just falling asleep would probably have gotten up and left so as to spare herself such pain. It's been a really long time since I've met a couple who enjoy jazz and music and it was just simply a great feeling to go out and be with people who enjoyed the same experience as me. They appeared to have enjoyed it even more than I did so it made it even better! I hope they didn't find me too annoying aftewards, as we all know how long my post-event conversation can be after anything let alone music, and that we can repeat the experience some time soon!
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A bit of after-concert sushi and a a lot of talking (mostly me as usual) made for an excellent dessert of the evening...
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