On the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville, venue of the festival Bis – improvised and free declination of JIM -, an improvised band on saxophone and trumpet. The streets of Marciac, where jazz versions of Lady Gaga's pop tube "Bad Romance" float, are already filled with aficionados from around the world. "It's not easy to come, but it's worth it," said Shinji Asada, a Japanese fifties fan of the genre. "Such artists in such a perfect setting, it's unexpected!".
The trumpet is a little star of the day: the American Wynton Marsalis and his French-Lebanese Ibrahim Maalouf, specialists in the instrument, are the long-awaited guests of the inaugural evening, in the second part. It is also a trumpet player, but more surprising, which inaugurates the festival. Lucienne Renaudin Vary, who won the Victoires de la Musique Clbadique at the age of 17 in 2016, has the honor of launching this 41st edition.
Marciac plays the "decompartmentalization"
And if the talented young woman leaves Offenbach and Vivaldi aside for one night to devote herself to jazz, "another pbadion that has been eating her since the age of ten", the tone is set. Marciac is jazz, but not only. With notes of clbadical music, baroque and funk, JIM will play this year the "decompartmentalization" between genres, in honor of a symbolic birthday: New Orleans, cradle of jazz, this year celebrates its 300 years old. The opportunity to celebrate this "place of multiculturalism".
JIM intends to pay tribute to this vision of jazz where "individual expression through improvisation takes precedence over codes," according to a statement. "The time is not to put things in small drawers," added the mayor Jean-Louis Guilhaumon, who claims a "freedom of tone" own festival, which he is also the president. This year, Marciac will see artists performing unusual repertoire, from the Debussy Quartet, a specialist in chamber music, to the unclbadifiable Mélanie de Biasio.
Joan Baez, Renaudin: place for women
But above all, Marciac this year intends to make "a special place for women," according to Mr. Guilhaumon. "The singers already had a very important place in previous editions," he told AFP, "but we have focused on women musicians, who are more significant."
Lisa Simone – daughter of Nina Simone -, Céline Bonacina, Mélodie Gardot: emerging talents and already recognized musicians take possession of the festival. With, in apotheosis, the iconic Joan Baez, icon of the 60s and 70s, whose concert for his farewell tour, titled "Fare thee well", has long been a full story.
A festival that became unavoidable
Bill Coleman, Lionel Hampton, Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Getz, Keith Jarrett … Most of the great names of jazz have occurred in Marciac, since its founding in 1978 by a handful of amateurs. In the middle of sunflower and rapeseed fields, the small town of 1,350 inhabitants is transformed, for a fortnight, into a true cosmopolitan metropolis of jazz. "The village is totally transformed," said his mayor to AFP, "some nights, we must mobilize the ban and the backbone of the territory to cope with the arrival of spectators!".
The anniversary edition of 40 years of JIM had brought together nearly 242,000 people. For this edition, which will take place this year from 27 July to 15 August, the president hopes to "achieve an equivalent result". With the "secret hope" to do even more.
