As you might have noticed I haven't updated my current favourite music for a while, which is unusual for me, but also linked to all the focussed exam preparation. But on Thursday music made it back into my life with a big bang. Everybody was out in the streets to celebrate the Fete de la musique, an event taking place all over France since 1982 every year on June 21st. The idea of the Fete de la musique is to encourage amateur bands play their music in the streets and get their night of fame, but also to make all kinds of music accessible to a wide audience through free concerts.
It was launched by Jack Lang, former culture minister, and I read that this year he kicked off the same event in New York. Which makes New York lagging 25 years behind Paris... !!!
I started to read the big program at 7 p.m. to check out, which route through Paris I should take to check out some jazz groups, when I found THE concert to go to : Kurt Masur, conducting Beethoven's 5th Symphony with the Orchestre National de France in my favourite museum, the Musée d'Orsay (a transformed train station built in 1900). But : limited number of people accepted. So I ran, ran, ran, hopped on the metro, ran again, and .... as expected there was an enourmous queue, but I was let into the museum at 7.50 p.m ! I was very excited, and couldn't believe I belonged to the lucky ones to have made it. No planning, no entrance fee and seeing one of the greates conducturs playing one of the greatest pieces of classic music in the most beautiful location possible. How lucky I was !!! Kurt Masur was the director of the New York Symphonic Orchestra until 2002 and is still the conductor of the London Symphonic Orchestra. As a funny coincidence my parents had just been four days before in Leipzig, Germany to his 80th birthday celebration gala concert, so I was satisfied to be able to catch up now...
The ambiance was very special and I could tell the orchestra and Kurt Masur did enjoy the unusual environment. I was very moved during the whole concert. C'etait vraiement un grand moment !
Sorry for the wild moving camera, I was too excited, and am definitely a better photographer than movie-maker...
Pictures taken before the concert from the audience towards the orchestra and from the orchestra's view into the audience after the concert.
After the concert I went back to my original plan, to stroll some neighbourhoods and check out the small unknown groups playing on every street corner. I started in the Marais, on the place the Vosges, another favourite place of mine in Paris, usually very quiet, transformed by hundreds of singing people under the arcades, walking back by Notre Dame, watching bands playing on the banks of the Seine, then via the boulevard Saint Germain, where cars couldn't move any more, stuck in the crowd. In St. Germain things got a bit too wild for me, and I started to feel almost scared by the crowd, now many people with bottles in hand (and head) so I took the rue de Rennes back home, where the second best group of my evening played pop/rock from the 80s in a street cafe, with an enthusiastic audience that blocked the wide Rue de Rennes, so that traffic got stuck there as well.
The passing policemen, instead of moving the people from the street, were waving from their cars that night to the band...
Crowded Place des Vosges
Even more crowded street in St. Germain. The band is on the left side in the middle next to the girl with the trumpet standing above the crowd.
A group playing on the Seine bank next to Notre Dame, with the audience on the stairs.
My last stop (in the background the lights of Tour Montparnasse near my home): a band in the Cafe du Metro with a big audience dancing and occupying the Rue de Rennes.
