It’s almost back to school and the return to daily worries. Period also of material preoccupations and tensions. However, inspired by the motto that music softens morals, the Jazz à la Villette festival has been offering for 20 years a journey and musical dialogues around jazz with the credo of curiosity, mixture, diversity and pleasure.
“Jazz at La Villette“, it is indeed a festival open to mixtures and encounters. Thus, different musical universes have always confronted each other, intertwined, almost collided. Faithful to its long-standing ambition, this 20th edition of Jazz à la Villette wants to be a land of welcome for all sensitivities, aesthetics and generations.
For this 2022 edition, coming from Israel, Cuba, England, South Africa, the United States, France or the West Indies, we will come across big names in jazz such as Abdullah Ibrahim, Kenny Barron or even Roberto Fonsecca. Which will rub shoulders with a new generation made up of Kokoroko, Jacob Banks, Cimafunk or Angel Bat David who wander on the side of Afrobeat, soul, funk, electro or gospel.
“Jazz at La Villette“2022 will also be the scene of many new and original concerts such as that of the Martinican composer and musician Chassol who, accompanied by the pianist Jocelyn Miennel, in a show entitled “Dress code”, will offer a new illustration of his “ultrascore“, a musical genre that consists of harmonizing the noises and sounds of the street.
Christophe Chassol, a baroque and atypical composer
Christophe Chassol, who has composed a lot for cinema, television and , plays with sounds and senses as a true researcher and constant innovator. Chassol draws its creative strength from its family history. “What does not kill you makes you stronger“, this aphorism takes on its full meaning when we know that his parents disappeared in the famous crash of the West Caribbean in Venezuela, in August 2005. Author of four albums “X-Pianos” in 2012, “Indiamore” in 2013, “Big Sun” in homage to Martinique in 2015 and “Play” in 2020, a new ultrascore project inspired by the novel “The Game of Glass Beads” by Hermann Hesse, he has been a columnist for France Musique since 2017.
Alain Jean-Marie, legend of French and Francophone jazz
Jazz à la Villette 2022, these are resolutely modern and contemporary musical styles in which Alain Jean-Marie, guest this year, will have no difficulty finding his place as the legendary Guadeloupean pianist, one of the fathers of biguine jazz , has adapted throughout his career to all facets and currents of jazz.
A self-taught musician, Alain Jean-Marie has accompanied the biggest names on the world jazz scene (Arc hie Shepp, Bill Coleman, James Moody, Abbey Lincoln, Dee Dee Bridgewater…). He is truly a legend of French and Francophone jazz who, for his entire career, received a Victory of Honor from the hands of Archie Shepp in person at the Victoires du jazz ceremony in 2021. Alain Jean- Marie will perform in duet with Diego Imbert.
A rich and varied program where, for 12 days on the stages of the Grande Halle de la Villette and the Paris Philharmonic at the Cité de la Musique, all facets of jazz will be represented to the delight of music lovers. A good way also for others, amateurs or laymen, to extend the holidays even further by filling up on good music and sometimes unpublished sounds.
20th edition of Jazz at La Villette
From August 31 to September 11, 2022
221, avenue Jean-Jaures
75019 Paris