You remember Jordan Zell, don’t you, the France Revisited Guest Blogger from Israel who came to Paris in June seeking inspiration for his songwriting?
Well, this fall, freshly inspired and with new songs in his repertoire, Jordan has taken the next step in his career and has been playing in bars in Jerusalem. He’s been performing his own songs and various covers accompanied by talented guitarist and assistant arranger Yuri Stolov.
One of the songs they’ve been playing is “On a Train from Paris to Rome,” which Jordan was working on in Paris and for which I wrote the lyrics. One of these days we’ll get around to making a real video for it, but in the meantime you can watch and listen to a recent practice performance of the song at the Putin Bar in Jerusalem.
I’m actually not a big fan of this version since I find its ending is a bit of a downer (Jordan disagrees), Yuri’s fingering sometimes makes it sound as though the train is headed to Spain (Yuri disagrees), and the sound quality, though decent for bar, isn’t great, especially regarding the lyrics, which I’m sure you’ll all want to listen to very attentively. Also, you can’t see Jordan’s face from behind his shadow-mask. But I’m just the lyricist.
So here it is, Jordan Zell and Yuri Stolov playing “On a Train from Paris to Rome,” a travel song by Jordan Zell (music) and yours truly (lyrics), take 1.
A blogload of thanks to the many readers who wrote to tell me how much you loved France Revisited’s number one musical hit of the season “She Walked Along the River, a.k.a. The T-Shirt Song”! (If you haven’t yet heard the song you can do on this site by clicking here or on Youtube by clicking here.)
Okay, it may be a stretch to say that you “loved” the song. Rather, there were three general categories of comment.
1. The “I didn’t know you sing” comment. My response: Neither did I.
2. The “You and Jordan [Zell] should write more songs together” comment. My response: We are. We’ve written five already–his music, my lyrics–and if you’re in Jerusalem on Sept. 16 you can hear some of them during Jordan’s solo concert.
3. The “I liked the song until the f-word at the end” comment. My response: I sometimes feel a little bad about the use of the f-word, but in writing the song it felt like a natural ending to the story told in the song, so there you have it. (My deepest thanks to the ambitous reader who told me I could never get the song on the radio with the f- bomb in it. And my deepest sympathy to the high school teacher who told me that she can no longer recommend France Revisited to her students.)
Some of the above categories of comment came through the post office accompanied by a t-shirt, so I want to especially thank those dedicated readers by the following photos of their generous gift.
With thanks to the reader who went to London, here I am in your t-shirt in front of the statue of Henri IV on Ile de la Cité:
With thanks to the reader who had a t-shirt specially printed in honor of the fact that “The T-Shirt Song” was recorded in Israel, here I am in your t-shirt below the Pont Neuf:
With thanks to the reader in Paris who understood the cynicism and humor of “The T-Shirt Song” as soon as he heard it, here I am in front the Paris Police Headquarters.
With further thanks to all astute readers with a sense of humor, here I am sitting by the river in a second “I love rien” t-shirt:
I look forward to any gifts I might receive once we’ve completed our France Revisited music video about prostitution in Paris.
Those visiting Paris in late July and August are well aware of the existence of Paris Plage, the 5-week beach that’s set up along the Seine in the very center of the city.
Much less well known and less visited is the Paris Plage extension along Bassin de la Villette in the once-far-flung and increasingly happening 19th arrondissment. The bassin is best approached via the Jaurès or Stalingrad metro stop.
Far from the constant, international crowds enjoying a stroll along the Seine, the “beach” area along Bassin de la Villette has a comparatively local feel to it.
So local, in fact, that at 7 o’clock yesterday evening families were going home for dinner as they would from a real neighborhood beach.
There were only a few stragglers on the lounge chairs on the beach (photo 1) and no one at the ice cream stand (photo 2).
Aside from the pleasantness of an off-center promenade, the main attraction of this little beach zone is the open-air dance space that’s set up from July 20 to August 20. Every day from 5 to 8 p.m., later on weekends, a public dance is held, led by a master or mistress of ceremony.
Couples and individuals take to the boards try out their steps, whether well practiced or just trying hard. You can, too.
Every night there’s a different type of music according to the following schedule:
Monday: Ballroom.
Tuesday: Rock ’n’ roll and swing.
Wednesday: Bal musette, traditional French dancehall.
Thursday: Tango.
Friday: Salsa.
Saturday: Grand Bal (Musette), traditional French dancehall.
Sunday: Country—yes, country!
I took the photo above on tango evening. That and ballroom draw the fewest dancers, which is why the dancefloor looks sparse above. But it can get quite crowded on other evenings, especially Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
Bassin de la Villette may feel far afield, but a summer stroll actually offers an uncrowded, close-up view of the Eiffel Tower.
Gospel’s got a special place in the soul of Europeans, who, generally speaking, hear it not as a call to praise the Lord but as the exotic voice of religion in America, a foreign, typically ethnic form of expression. For the French in particular, “Oh, Happy Day” is shorthand for religious life in America the way that for Americans “La vie en rose” is shorthand for romance in Paris. Two wonderful clichés.
Yesterday I went to hear “Oh, Happy Day” and a dozen other African-American sacred songs at the American Church in Paris, performed by the Charleston Symphony Orchestra Gospel Choir. A Francophile correspondent in the choir had invited me.
Among the standing-room-only crowd there were a few of amen corners and raised hands, invariably Americans, along with an international mix of divinely beaming faces, but most simply let their appreciation be shown by thunderous applause and exit donations (entrance was free).
This was the third and final concert in Europe for the all-volunteer choir, under the direction of Sandra S. Barnhart, after performances at Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London and Bath Abbey in Bath.
The American Church in Paris is an interdenominational Protestant Christian church that claims to be the first American church established on foreign soil. Its first sanctuary was established in 1857, but its main period of growth came after WWI with the presence of American soldiers in France followed by the American tourist boom of the 1920s. The present church at 67 quai d’Orsay dates from 1929. It is home to two bilingual elementary schools, a variety of “twelve step” recovery groups, basketball leagues, other church and community-based services, and a free concert series.
Last night I attended Swinging Life, a musical revue of soul, jazz, gospel, and blues songs that have been heard on Broadway, playing through July 31 at the Alhambra, a 600-seat theater in the Canal Saint Martin Quarter.
I went to Swinging Life because the PR rep offered me a ticket and because the theater is 300 yards from my apartment, certainly not because I had any expectations of a good show. Paris may have an impressive record of playing adoring host to African-American music and musicians, but it also has an underwhelming reputation when it comes to Broadway. There’s a tendency for small productions, and sometimes large, to try to ride high on great songs without sufficient quality of voices, musicians, acting, or choreography to back them up.
Case in point earlier this year, Hair, which set out from January through March to show how meaningful that tale of peace, love, and freedom can be 40+ years down the road, only to reveal how little the producers and the director knew about musical comedy.
In 2007 I wrote for a Connecticut theater magazine an article about how national and international theater producers were becoming increasingly tempted by the adventure and finances of bringing Broadway to the City of Lights. Two years later Broadway-sur-Seine—or West End on the Right Bank, if you prefer—is definitely on the up-and-up.
Case in point, Swinging Life. Swinging Life is not a Broadway musical per say but rather a four-act assembly of choice soul, jazz, gospel, and blues tunes from various shows (Broadway opening year in parenthesis): Play On (1997), Blues in the Night (1982), The Life (1987), The Color Purple (Broadway, 2005), Smokey Joe’s Café (1995), Dreamgirls (1982). All of the songs are sung here in English with only an occasional line of French dialogue between songs, so the show if fully accessible to non-French-speakers.
What surprised me last night was how proficient and professional the show was, especially considering the ticket price: 30€ for 1, 45€ for 2; 15€ for students.
Only in the past few years has Paris has truly begun to renew with the tradition of the actor-singer-dancer that is so familiar in the United States and England. With a dearth of opportunities until recently, it’s understandable that there hasn’t been a huge pool of well-rounded talent. Things are apparently swinging in the right direction.
Swinging Life may not have Broadway/West End-quality singing-acting-dancing through and through, but its eight performers maintain the rhythm, movement and voice of the show at a consistently good level, with notable performances by Germaine Depry, Anandha Seethanen, Mélina Mariale. Significantly, all but one of the eight had a role (mostly minor) in Paris’s recent production of Le Roi Lion (The Lion King), which to me is a sign that the actor-singer-dancer talent pool in France, while still shallow compared with the U.S. and the U.K., is deepening.
Here’s a video of one of their voice rehearsals that gives a sense of the spirit of the show and the quality of the voices.
The adept orchestra led by Jan Stumke, the arranger, on piano, reinforces the fine professionalism of the show. And I was especially surprised by the quality of the direction and choreography since that’s where I’ve learned to keep my expectations particularly low in Paris for inexpensive musical revues. Though the emphasis in Swinging Life is more on singing than dancing, Jean-Michel Fournereau’s direction is both efficient and energetic, with wise use of the limited stage space and only a few what-the-hell-was-that-all-about distractions.
The one failing of the show is that on several occasions the performers weren’t able to express the emotion of the song, particularly in the first and third of the four acts due in part to the absence of a storyline in which to embed the emotion or the song. Nevertheless, Swinging Time is well worth considering for English-speaking travelers and residents in Paris.
A further attraction is the fact that the Alhambra is in the canal quarter, an ever-so-pleasant area for a summertime evening stroll, with plenty of laid-back, non-pricey cafés-restaurants to choose from within a two-minute radius of the theater. The show ends shortly before 11 p.m., when most places in the area stop serving food, other than salads, so you might come at around 7/7:30 for an early dinner before the show. Afterwards take a romantic walk along the canal, and perhaps stop into a café to prolong the evening, as everyone else will seem to be doing. Altogether a enjoyable evening for a couple or a family, without NY or London prices.
Swinging Life, Tues.-Sat., July 2-31, 2009, at 8:30 p.m. at L’Alhambra, 21 rue Yves Toudic, 10 arrondissement, Metro République or Jacques Bonsergent. The show lasts two hours, plus a 20-minute intermission. Reservations: 01 40 20 40 25. Tickets: 30€ for 1, 45€ for 2; 15€ for students. Since the Alhambra has open seating and is unlikely to fill in summer, I suspect that little to no advance reservation are necessary. Dress lightly, the theater can be warm in summer. For more information see www.myspace.com/swinginglifemusical.
The Alhambra, a 600-seat theater in the Canal Saint Martin Quarter, is largely devoted to concerts by contemporary artists (hip-hop, jazz, rock, pop, etc.). For a schedule of concerts see www.alhambra-paris.com.
The next big things. Two big productions are coming to Paris this fall, accompanied by significant marketing money: Mozart, l’opéra rock, a French production, opening Sept. 22 for at least a 10-week run at the Palais des Sports, and Zorro, whose London run ended in April, opening later in the fall at the Folies Bergère.
