However you like it it’s here.

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Sing along with it:

Hum along with it:

Snap your fingers to it:

Cry yourself a River Seine of it:

Lift a glass and take a long draw of it:

Get in the mood of it:

Take it smooth:

Croon with it:

Stroll with it along the boulevard:

However you like your April in Paris it’s here.
How DO you like your April in Paris?

The post April in Paris appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Advance tickets are advisable at the top classical music and opera festivals, though it’s even more important to secure accommodations if you wish to stay nearby a concert venue. But don’t let a lack of tickets or advance planning or even lodging keep you from venturing into these villages, towns and cities during festival time. There’s often room for one more visitor, and a room in the region to spare.

Alsace: Musica. Strasbourg holds a major European festival devoted to the contemporary repertoire featuring the work of 20th-century composers and 21st-century creations, two weeks from late September to early October.

Aquitaine: Festival du Perigord Noir. The angels sing, are sung and are played to at this festival with venues at various locations throughout Black Perigord, between Périgueux and Souillac, from early August to mid-October.

Auvergne: Festival Europavox,  late May, during which a square in Clermont-Ferrand gives itself over for three days to European rock. Festival de Craponne-sur-Arzon, a 3-day celebration of country music (mostly American) in the heart of the country of France at the end of July.  Near Craponne, the village of La Chaise-Dieu is consumed by classical music for 10 days at the end of August during the Festival de la Chaise-Dieu.

Burgundy: Les Francos Gourmandes. French music and French gastronomy go hand in hand—ear and mouth—during a weekend in early June in the town of Tournus (Soane-et-Loire).

Centre-Val de Loire: Le Printemps de Bourges is a rock ’n roll rite of spring that draws hoards to this town at the very center of France for six days in late April. Musicalies en Sologne transforms the village of Pierrefitte-sur-Sauldre (Sologne) into the happy home of traditional music and folk dance over the first weekend of May.

Champagne-Ardenne: Le Cabaret Vert, a 4-day ecologically conscious rock festival held toward the end of August near the Belgian border in Charlesville-Mézières. The Reims Jazz Festival, runs for ten days in November and provides another good reason to visit the city’s champagne cellars off season.

Languedoc-Roussillon: Festival Radio France brings a rich and dense program of classical music (in its broadest sense) to Montpellier for two weeks in mid-July. During more or less the same period, jazz fans from the region and from well beyond flock to Jazz à Junas, held within the remarkable setting of the old quarries at Junas (Gard), between Nimes and Montpellier.

Limousin: Festival des Nuits de Nacre. The accordion, now there’s a beloved instrument in France, but there’s only one accordion factory left in the country, in Tulle (Corrèze), which explains the reason for Tulle’s mid-September festival celebrating the accordion in all its glory.

Nord-Pas de Calais: Nuits Secrètes. The secret is out: if you want to discover lesser-known and up-and-coming French and European band, come to Aulnoye-Aymeries, near the Belgian border, over the first weekend of August for three musical marathon nights devoted to all kinds of rock and contemporary sounds. More well-known names fill the posters for the Mainsquare Festival within the vast confines of the citadel at Arras over the first weekend of July. In 2013: Green Day, Sting, Indochine.

Normandy: Festival Beauregard. A rock festival in the park of the Chateau de Beauregard, just outside Caen over the first weekend of July. Further proof that there’s more than war tourism in the area of the 1944 Battle of Normandy.

Pays de la Loire (Western Loire): La Folle Journée de Nantes, when the city of Nantes goes crazy for classical music for five days late January to early February.

Poitou-Charentes: Les Francofolies de La Rochelle. A joyful 5-day French rock festival in the Atlantic coastal town of La Rochelle, mid-July.

Provence-Riviera (PACA): French and foreigners alike swell the villages and towns of southeast France, making it fertile ground for music and theater festivals to bloom. Among the best of them is Les Chorégies d’Orange, mid-July to early August, when opera (mostly and most impressively) takes to the great and dramatic stage of the Roman Theater of Orange (Vaucluse). Through the month of July, Aix-en-Provence also stretches the vocal limits of performers during its Festival International d’Art Lyrique.

Rhones-Alpes: Jazz à Vienne. A major jazz festival devoted mostly to classical jazz with some blues, is held in Vienne, 20 miles south of Lyon, from late June to mid-July.

Continue to Festivals in France, Part II: Exceptional and Unique Celebrations.

The post Festivals in France, Part I: Major Musical Events appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Sinfonietta Paris Chamber Orchestra is a new artistic organization and orchestra dedicated to showcasing and developing a new generation of orchestral musicians and soloists. Founded in 2011 and led by American Michael Boone, Sinfonietta Paris will be revealing its talent on April 11 and 12, 2013 through a program of Stamitz, Strauss and Suk presented at two different venues in Paris.

[Contest information follows below the article.]

In creating this orchestra of 17 young professional artists in the early stages of their careers, Mr. Boone, Sinfonietta’s executive and artistic director, is seeking to develop an orchestra that is “young, international, remarkable, adventurous.”

International, perhaps, but American at heart.

Mr. Boone previously served as Assistant Conductor with the Longmont Symphony Orchestra in Colorado and on the conducting faculty in the University of Oklahoma School of Music. He says that he came to France for “the opportunity to study and work with musicians who come from the European tradition of classical performance… first to study with pedagogue Neil Thomson and second to develop Sinfonietta Paris.”

Sinfonietta Paris will be performing on April 11 at the Eglise Réformée des Batignolles (17th arrondissement) and on April 12 at the Habitat for Humanity Gala Event held at the American Church (7th arrondissment). Conducted by Mr. Boone, the program on both evenings includes:

Johann Stamitz’s Symphony in A Major (ca. 1746),
Richard Strauss’s Sextet from Capriccio, Op. 85 (1942) (version for string orchestra),
Josef Suk’s Serenade in E-flat, Op. 6 for String Orchestra.

Rika Masato, serving as premier violon solo, was a finalist in the 2006 Paganini International competition and studied with Roland Daugareil, premier violon solo with Orchestre de Paris. Principal cellist Askar Ishangaliyev was born in Kazakhstan and studied at the CNSM; he also serves as principal cellist with the ensemble Le Balcon. Principal second violinist Winnie Huang was born in Shanghai and studied in Melbourne, Australia; she’s performed with the Melbourne and Thailand Philharmonic orchestras among others. Principal violist Kyle Collins, an American, was invited to the Aspen school and studied at the Cincinnati Conservatory.

Still in its infancy as a chamber orchestra, Sinfonietta Paris hopes not only to attract an appreciative audience to these concerts but to also find ears receptive for its call for private and corporate financial support. If all goes well, says Mr. Boone, a second series of performances will be given on May 30 and 31. He says that the current goal is to deliver four concert programs per season, with two concerts per program.

Between concerts such as these, SPCO has also been conducting “Cocktails & Conversations” private chamber events, one of which this writer had the pleasure of attending at Grace Teshima’s private gallery in Montmartre. Grace Teshima, as likable in person as she is on Facebook, is a tireless and generous promoter of American artistic efforts in Paris.

Sinfonietta Paris Chamber Orchestra, performing on April 11 at 8pm at the Eglise Réformée des Batignolles, a church with exquisite acoustics, 44 boulevard des Batignolles, 17th arrondissement. Metro Rome. Tickets: 15€ for premium seating, 10€ for general seating, 5€ for students. See SPCO’s website for further information.

The Winning Entry of France Revisited’s Musical Vignette Contest

The Entertainer
By Susan Laurent

Zigzagging through the corridor, dodging shoppers laden with carry bags, I was navigating like a spaceship through a field of asteroids. Today was the first Saturday of the sales at Val d’Europe Shopping Center east of Paris. Over the muzak they were playing the theme to that old Paul Newman film The Sting. I didn’t remember much about the film, but I had a soft spot for the music, a composition by Scott Joplin. What was it called?

At the end of the mall I could see the intersection was chock-a-block with people. And I realized it wasn’t Muzak at all. It was live music, not played by an amateur pianist paid peanuts to entertain the shoppers. This musician sounded like a seasoned professional. Lunch could wait. I had to see what this paragon looked like; maybe it was someone famous.  So I pushed my way through the wall of listeners until I could see over the shoulder of a young woman in black skintight blue jeans.

In the middle of the crowd, sitting on a bench in front of a piano, was a boy of about ten years old. A soiled blue anorak lay beside him on the bench. He was knocking out that number as if he had been taught to play by the king of Ragtime himself.  He was not a handsome child. The face was too long, and the limp brown hair that hung to his shoulders was not any too clean. He was wearing a red-checkered shirt, a couple of sizes too big for him, so that the sleeves had to be rolled up. It looked like it might be a hand-me-down from an older brother. Pale and thin, he was not the kind of boy who would be first choice for the neighborhood rugby team. I doubted if his parents could afford piano lessons. And yet the kid played with practiced skill and with a passion that grabbed me in the gut.

No one in the audience spoke; no one moved until the last note died away. Then we all went wild, clapping, whistling, cries of Bravo went up. He had us all in the palm of his hand, and you could tell he knew it. Suddenly, the name of the music came to me. It was “The Entertainer.”

© 2013, Susan Laurent

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Patricia Kaas, the sultry blond bombshell from the Moselle region of Eastern France, blasted onto the French music scene in the late 1980s with a series of Dietrich-esque chart-toppers like Mademoiselle Chante le Blues et Mon Mec à Moi, songs that still get plenty of French airtime.

Kaas’s latest album ‘Kaas Chante Piaf’ is a homage to Edith, but with a difference. Yes, there’s La Vie en Rose, Hymne à l’Amour and Milord… but Kaas made a conscious choice to showcase many of the lesser-known songs in the Piaf repertoire like C’est un Gars, co-written by Pierre Roche and Charles Aznavour.

The latest lap of her Franco-Belgian tour (through April 19) tour kicks off in Marseille on February 12, with a long-awaited 5-night stand at Paris’s historic Olympia (February 26 to March 3).

And Jacques Brel?

Here’s the surprise: Olivier Laurent, a young Belgian who lives in Chinon (Loire Valley), manages to incarnate Jacques Brel down to the last grimace, the last flick of the fingers and the last bar of Ne Me Quitte Pas. He’ll be opening the show.

At a preview in Paris at the Théâtre des Deux Anes, it was apparent that Laurent does more than imitate. Instead, he seems to be channeling Brel, and then effortlessly, with no costume change, he becomes Charles Trenet or Yves Montand singing Brel. Then–a tour de force–he breaks into a one-man quintet of Brel imitators laced with Johnny Hallyday howls.

It’s terrific. Not to be missed… if you’re lucky enough to get a seat.

© 2013, Corinne LaBalme

Corinne LaBalme, a Paris-based writer, journalist and editor, is currently working on development of a series life-style documentaries for Muses Productions.

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The two bridges in the heart of Paris that have been most defaced decorated with love locks are the Pont des Arts, the footbridge and fine-weather picnicking bridge that goes between the Louvre and the French Institute, and the Pont de l’Archevêché, the short bridge behind Notre-Dame that connects the City Island with the Left Bank.

They are presented here in a beautiful audio-slideshow featuring photographs by Joe Wilkins and music and text written, played and read by LaRae Raine Garretson. A France Revisited Production.

(c) 2011, All rights reserved.

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I mention Egypt today—date of the official launching of the new version of this web magazine—not because France Revisited is now intent on analyzing world affairs (we have enough trouble keeping track of our own) but to note that, coincidentally, I attended this past week two cultural events in Paris with Egyptian themes: a photo exhibit and an opera. Both were planned long before the crowds started gathering in Tahrir Square.

The first was an opening of “Night Colors,” an exhibit of photographs by Thibault de Puyfontaine at Montmartre’s Little Big Galerie. As I note in my review of the exhibit, the photos, taken between 2007 and 2010, reveal the colors of night rather than the politics and frustrations of day.

The second was a performance of Handel’s Giulio Cesare (in Egitto), Julius Caesar (in Egypt), at the stunningly beautiful and grotesquely ornate Garnier Opera, where the seats up by the ceiling are so cramped that it’s unlikely anyone would stand for them anywhere else.

You won’t find a review of the opera on France Revisited because the opera critic was out of town that evening (hence my ticket). Suffice it to say: Cleopatra was, for all intents and purposes, naked on stage (hence so many binoculars?), Julius Caesar fell for her beauty and charm, he liberated her and Egypt from the hands of her brother Ptolemy, they don’t make castrati like they used to, and Egypt and Roman power and intercultural love nevertheless triumphed.

I found myself thinking how amazing it is to write such a work, how ambitious it is to conceive and construct buildings like the Garnier Opera, what dedication it takes to sing like those singers, play like those musicians and conduct like that conductor, what imagination it takes to design such a set and direct such a production, how honorable resistance can be, and all kinds of uplifting thoughts about go-getters and their achievements, followed by the usual comedown as I headed for the metro.

But I’m not the least bit envious. I’m just glad to be back in the editorial saddle again now that the new version of France Revisited has been launched.

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