The annual jazz fest, which runs from May 3-7, hosts some 30 acts over five days and is a major event in the harbour town of 120,000 souls
The seventeenth Maijazz got off to a slow start Tuesday (May 3) in Norway's coastal fourth and oil hub, Stavanger.
The opening concert by Sweden's Lars Danielsson Group, featuring Danish singer Cacilie Nordby and a string quartet out of the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra, raised its gaze after half an hour of introspection and tinkering and eventually managed to not leave a sell-out crowd wanting.
The annual jazz fest, which runs from May 3-7, hosts some 30 acts over five days and is a major event in the harbour town of 120,000 souls, due to be European Capital of Culture in 2008 alongside Liverpool.
Acts worth mentioning include the Joshua Redman Elastic Band, Femi Kuti, Terje Rypdal/Hilliard Ensemble, Ska Cubano, Zap Mama, noJazz, Le Peuple de L'Herbe/DJ Ollie Teeba, Incognito and Stanley Clarke, plus Scandinavian and local acts such as Jon Eberson, Rigmor Gustafsson/Jacky Terrason (Fr.), Frode Gjerstad and Didrik Ingvaldsen.
Maijazz caters for a general audience, offering a number of melodic, sensuous crowd pleasers, a few boisterous free-jazzists, some crossover romps (often Francophone) and occasional concert-hall giants. Management have a stated aim of breaking previous attendance records, which considering a strong programme could well happen despite a vacillating opening night.
So far, sell-outs at Maijazz are Saturday's Ska Cubano, a recording project that caught on to become a hot live act internationally that honours its every influence on its own terms, rather than melding all of it together and struggling with it. Like France's noJazz, who, one man short at check-in at Paris Charles de Gaulle, were lent a pair of able, helping hands by local DJ Prince and gave an energetic but jerky performance later on Tuesday.
No Jazz, May 3
School is in session. An initial series of precision horn themes over thick, luscious grooves that make all the right organs respond in gleeful, vibratory unison, see noJazz setting off on a commanding note, only to scarcely make the first bridge before letting a void of expectation draw breath for a later yawn. Much anticipation is dampened. Thoroughly laid beats and basslines carry the band's energy aloft but keep morphing into choppy, stomping and schizoid wotsits that leave peak meters not quite peaking.
The promise of a spirited blow-out to close the Stavanger festival's first night drew a full house for the Parisian quintet, made up of Philippe Balatier (keyboards, sample machines), Philippe Sellam (soprano/alto saxophones), Pascal Reva (drums, bass, guitar, vocals) and Guillaume Poncelet (trumpet, Fender Rhodes). They came together from various walks of musical life to make music, forming a band that would take on a life of its own and draw festival and gig invites from countries near and far.
The format is simple - or tough - enough: A clubby hip hop structure courtesy of samplers, turntables and keys tightened and focused through crisp jazz licks on trumpet and sax, drummer Reva also handling bass, guitar and vocals to amend, support, and stop gaps. It's jazz, funk and hip hop fused and confused, with a back door wide open to everything from Miles to the Mahgreb. Loads of fun. At times it draws oomph from the unlikeliest of places, but as often the groove shifts, then the band's focus, and you sort-of stop dancing, wondering what just went.
Projects such as noJazz have a hard task to start off with. Like tapping into fifty sought-after, multi-genre compilations and rendering that essence manually to make a brand new, top-selling elite-class comp. I said quintet, but listed four: Mike Chekli (turntables) never made check-in in Paris, we learned. For a stand-in noJazz found local lad DJ Prince, who drew nods and grins of approval for his skilled insertion of scratches and mid-layer breaks. Chekli's his absence might in part explain why the band didn't quite do it.
