Vienne Opens with James Brown Tribute, Avishai Cohen and Diana Krall
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
The French jazz festival season got underway over the weekend with the start of the Jazz a Vienne festival in the small town of Vienne just a stone’s throw away from Lyon. The main concerts take place in the Theatre Antique Roman Amphitheatre that dominates the town. The opening night’s concert was themed around a tribute to James Brown and featured Rose Ann Diamalante and her band and then a fantastic band put together by Pee Wee Ellis and Fred Wesley featuring Cheikh Lo and singer Simphiwe Dana.
The Saturday night concert in the Theatre Antique featured a double bill of Avishai Cohen playing unusually for him in a duet with pianist Shai Maestro and Vienne favourite Diana Krall. The theatre was unsurprisingly sold out; Cohen and Maestro played a beautiful set taken from Cohen's latest album Gently Disturbed and the often boisterous crowd were completely drawn into this compelling haunting music. Cohen showed flashes of his more lively playing techniques but this set was all about melody, content and the superb understanding that Cohen and Maestro have. Diana Krall come on stage to a tremendous reception from the crowd and was as relaxed as I have ever seen her.
She had a smile on her face almost all the way through her set and spent time telling the crowd about her children, who she said were “in the hotel, smoking cigars and drinking Condrieu.” When her music blew into her lap from a very rare gust of cool wind, she proceeded to turn it into a paper airplane which she launched into the crowd! Her regular band of Anthony Wilson (guitar), John Clayton (bass) and Jeff Hamilton (drums) were as good as ever and after a truly great set she came back for a well deserved encore from which the crowd did not want to let her go.
A hard act to follow – but huge credit to singer Norma Winstone who performed in the club at midnight. A capacity crowd in a very hot club were spellbound by Winstone with Klaus Gesing on sax and Glauco Venier on piano. The trio, now very established and able to play easily off one another, showed a totally different side of jazz vocals from what had gone on earlier – a very definite highlight so far. Later still at the club Mix down on the banks of the Rhone Eska Mtungwazi had another packed venue dancing around to her soul/jazz beats.
Story and photo: Tim Dickeson
(Pictured: Avishai Cohen)