Let the music play

Chazelle church in the December snow

It is a busy time for us throughout the winter and early spring, as we are on the organising committee of Les Guitares en Cormatinois which is a music festival held every June/July in the church in Chazelle, a venue which has the most amazing acoustics.

The artists have been fixed for the coming festival and yet again we will have a very wide range of different guitar music.

Irish Kind of two years ago

We start on Saturday 7th July with an old favourite “Irish Kind Of” who surprisingly enough play Irish music. They are usually a sell-out, so get your reservations in early for that one.

On Sunday 8th we have a violin/guitar duo who should be very interesting. They haven’t given us their programme yet so I can’t give any more details on that one but it will be classical.

The following weekend we have only one concert, it will be on the Sunday (15th) we have Hair Brother a duo of guitars with humour thrown in for good measure.

The last weekend of the festival 21st and 22nd, we have Duo Atlas (guitar and cello) from Spain with interpretations of voice within music, which we are really looking forward to and a Manouche band Paris-Gadjo Club which should be a real crowd puller.

Let's hope we have plenty of sell-outs like this one

This year we have a time change for the concerts, all of the concerts will be at 17.30. We have always had more people to the Sunday afternoon concerts than to the Saturday evening ones, so we will see how this change goes.

Not only are we collecting information, designing and preparing the flyers and posters, but this year we have decided to renew the website to bring it up to date both stylistically and technically. We have had discussions with a designer and have found our new-look, all we have to do is put that into practice.

So there is lots of work to be done before we can sit back and listen to the music.

For the latest updates check out the website in the new year.

A nation in mourning

Jean D'Ormesson in his Académie Française uniform

In Tuesday evening’s news the first 10 minutes were dedicated to Jean D'Ormesson, a member of the Académie Française, a philosopher, former head of Le Figaro and a prolific author, who passed away at the age of 94. President Macron called him "a prince in the world of literature".

As we watched that item on the news, we were impressed that an intellectual giant should get the first 10 minutes, summing up for us the French love of literature and philosophy and how that is engrained into their education system and hence the national character.

But the French also have a love of the performing arts, musicians and actors are held in great respect as well. None more so than Johnny Hallyday who is a national institution.

Rather prophetically we wondered how many minutes the rock star would get when he passes away and the next evening we found out.

Johnny Hallyday on stage

Johnny Hallyday is the biggest rock star France has ever had, was a legend in his own lifetime. Whilst he never made it outside the French speaking world, he was obviously well respected enough in the world-wide business to get the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page and Peter Frampton to play on his albums.

Even though (or maybe because) he had a “Bad Boy” image, he was loved by everyone. Generation after generation of kids had Johnny as their idol and in an ever changing world where kids grow up rebelling against their parents’ old-fashioned tastes and almost automatically dislike their parents’ idols, that is quite an amazing feet. He managed to change with the times and grow his audience. Helped in no small part by his charismatic performances both on and off the stage, he fell and he picked himself up many times, he failed and he came back and all the time he never stopped working. President Macron summed up Johnny very nicely "There was something of Johnny in all French people….. Across generations, he carved himself into the lives of French people”. He was both an ordinary and an extraordinary man.

The man himself in his iconic leather jacket

So when he passed away, the evening news was not only dedicated entirely to him, but it was extended to last more than an hour. There were no other items. After the “news” there was a two hour documentary on his life and music and that was followed by one of his most recent concerts. That is how big this man was in the French psyche.

So France is a country in mourning. It lost two of its greatest human treasures almost on the same day.

Trauma in the New Theatre in Chalon

The new theatre, in the dark depths of an industrial zone

After a summer chock-a-block full of concerts we were entering autumn, winter and spring with only two concerts in view. The first one was last week - a Fado singer in Chalon.

I am not a fan of Fado, but Cees is, so we bought tickets. As we were on our way through Chazelle, I had a sudden light bulb moment and remembered that the theatre, where all the concerts are normally given, was closing down for a two year renovation as of September – so where the heck was our concert going to be? An emergency three point turn followed by a racing start and screeching halt at La Tuilerie, to check out the theatre website. Of course both of us had switched off our computers (bloomin’ energy saving ideas) and so our departure was somewhat delayed. Good job I did think of it in time, as the new theatre is completely on the other side of town and not at all where I thought it was even when I had remembered it had moved – if you get my drift.

Inflated tarpaulin 

No problem, we are chronically early for everything (too long in The Netherlands) so we were on time for the concert. People were going into the auditorium when Cess handed over our electronic tickets that he had printed out, no cheery beep for us from Ticketman’s scanner we got a blurp – tickets not valid! What?? Ticketman then looked at the tickets and said “these are for an orchestra in May”. Oh no…. someone had brought the wrong tickets with him. There was no way we could get home in time to get the right tickets and still see the concert – “what a pity” I was secretly thinking. Ticketman suggested we talked to Ticketlady, maybe something could be done.

Rplacement ticket

Ticketlady smiled when we told her our story and said “Quelle catastrophe !” and then tick, tick, tick on the computer, we were found and real cardboard tickets were printed out for us. Phew – “this concert had better be worth the hassle” I was thinking by then.

The new temporary theatre is a wooden base structure with an enormous red tarpaulin over it which seems to be inflated by a massive ventilation system. Inside there are 18 rows of 32  seats seemingly sloping up to the sky. When we got to our seats in row O, I felt like we had climbed half way up Mount Everest, but we had an impressive, towering view of the stage. My only concern was the lack of emergency exits. There were two for roughly 600 theatre goers and both of those were meters below us at row A. With only two narrow, steep staircases to get everyone down and out, I wasn’t sure what would happen in an emergency.

Gisela dances an encore, high heels gone,
time to seriously get dancing

The concert however, was fantastic. The singer (Gisela Joao) was quite superb and the musicians were even better. Gisela didn’t only sing Fado but she sang jolly, dancey songs and she was so enthusiastic about the songs that she jumped and danced all over the stage like a little girl. She insisted on trying to translate the words of each song, but her vocabulary let her down somewhat, so the Portuguese speakers in the audience had to shout out the missing words every so often. All in all she charmed the whole audience and her rendition of La Vie en Rose brought the house down.

It was great evening out, it was certainly worth the price of the tickets, the hassle of finding the place and the trauma of having the wrong paperwork with us, but I’m still not too sure about the safety of the theatre itself. I am hoping our seats for the next concert are a bit nearer the exits.

Music and food

Duo Duende performing

It is that time of year again when the guitar music festival takes place in our village. Last weekend we started with a charming father and son duo from Albi playing Spanish and Brazilian music. The members of the audience were tapping their feet to the interesting programme they performed.

The first concert in the series is often under attended, but we were pleased to see that Chazelle church was over half full. An excellent start to the series.

Dinner awaits

Sunday we had a local favourite Bernard Bruel who sings Jacques Brel songs. He normally sings to a taped accompaniment, but especially for our festival, he accompanied a number of the songs on the guitar. He should do that more often as it was a much more pleasant effect, than just a tape in the background, an accordionist would be even better, but that wouldn’t have fitted into the guitar concept! The church was almost full and everyone really enjoyed his interpretation of the songs, a selection of old favourites and lesser known Brel songs.

Bruel sings Brel

There are three more concerts in the series, Emmanuel Rossfelder, who appears every two or three years and is one of the “Godfathers” of the festival, a group of Corsican singers who will be performing a traditional polyphonic repertoire (something I have never heard before)and we will end the festival with a French, Irish music band, who were so popular last year, we had to turn people away at the door. All three of the remaining concerts have already sold more than half of the available tickets, so it looks like it will be a good year not only musically but financially, which will enable us to carry on after the last two lean years have rather depleted our coffers.

Superb buffet

After the concerts, the volunteers get together with the artists for a buffet meal prepared by Monique and Chantal in Monique’s house, conveniently located almost nextdoor to the church. They do us proud every time and these evenings were no different.

All in all, we had two very interesting evenings, with delicious food, the only downer was France losing in the Euro cup final – but you can’t have it all can you?

Onwards and upwards to the next concerts - I can’t wait.

A not-so-obscure African duo

Toumani & Sidiki Diabate from eastsidefm.org

Last night we went to a concert of African music in Chalon. Not expecting much from an obscure pair of players we were rather surprised at the number of people in the audience. Unbeknown to us, these guys – father and son Toumani & Sidiki Diabate from Mali- are very famous.

When the music started, I was surprised how like a celtic harp it sounded, not the African sound I am used to. The music was mesmerising and as the evening wore on I was quite blown away by the cross between early jazz rhythm and Gallic music that they created. I can’t describe it any better than that. I have found a video from Glastonbury 2014 (I told you they were famous) where they are playing if you are interested in hearing what it is all about.

Beautiful kora from nathaliecora.com

The instruments they were playing were koras. Father (Toumani) took time out to explain the instrument and how it is played. It is half a calabash covered in antelope skin, the strings used to be made of antelope skin as well, but nowadays they use fishing line instead. The tuning pegs have also been modernised and now they are built using harp/guitar technology. He didn’t say how many strings he had, but internet sources suggest that there are 21 or 25 strings. Only four digits are used to play the instrument, the thumb and index finger of each hand. The left thumb plays the base rhythm, the right thumb plays a basic tune (a bit like guitar scale plucking) and the two index fingers are used - in his words - to “improvise”.

There is no written music, the tunes and playing skills are passed down from father to son and their family, in particular, can be traced back for 71 generations, in the case of Toumani and so 72 generations for Sidiki, all kora players - quite some family tradition.

Intricate finger work - from the BBC video

In true French style every man and his dog was thanked just before the last number even the “village chief of Chalon-sur-Saône” got a thank you, although I am not sure they would have thanked him if they had known of his political views.

Their final piece was entitled Lampedusa, a haunting melody that they had written lest we forget the continuing tragedy of all the people who have drowned off that coast.

It was an enchanting evening and one I would certainly repeat if they came to somewhere near here again.

Guitares en Cormatinois

Chazelle church - the concert venue

The concert season is well and truly over and now is the time to look back, reflect on the concerts we worked so hard to get up and running, try and learn from what happened this year to make next year’s series a success. To that end, we have just had our end of season meeting and dinner at the president of our association’s house.

During the series of concerts I rather despaired at the lack of audience numbers for the better concerts. Jérémy Jouve was absolutely magnificent, but he played to a house half full. Franceries Sound Connection (strange name) was the same story, excellent quality, but not many people to enjoy it. The two other concerts were not as inspiring to my taste, but still well worth the ticket price at only 15 Euros, again few takers.

Jérémy Jouve - a real talent

Then we had the last concert. It was a band called Irish Kind Of (where do the French get these names from?) and this one was more than a sell-out, it was a pack them in, squeeze them in, use Japanese rush-hour pushers, then leave the doors open so they can breath, kind of concert. The church is full when we have 120 people in it, but for this concert we managed to squeeze in 145. I have heard better Irish bands to be honest, but the audience was thrilled and to be fair that concert saved the whole series. The financial figures, presented at the meeting, showed that because of that one concert we had not made a loss, which is quite an achievement in this day and age of reduced subsidies and less money in the common man’s pocket.

Franceries Sound Connection - an excellent concert

So our association and concert series lives to see another year and after last year’s losses of 2.5 thousand Euros, I was not convinced that 2016 would see any concerts at all.

But here is the conundrum: We are an association that is dedicated to bringing a concert series of quality guitar music to the local public, but the really excellent guitar concerts had virtually no takers and the one concert that performed music that is currently in vogue, was a sell-out. For me that is disappointing to say the least. Should we go back to filling the series with more popular music and be just like anyone else, bend with the current trends or should be stick with quality and have it reach just a handful of people?

The public arrive - selling tickets

Last night we had a long discussion on just this subject and we have come up with a compromise. Thankfully we are going to stick with quality, but also have some obvious crowd-pullers to fill the coffers. Listening to the CDs of the potential performers for next year, I think the balance will be good. Now we will have to wait and see if any of them is willing to come to our small festival for a price we can afford.

Fingers crossed.

Jazz concert in Charolles

Inside the magnificent Basilica - Paray-le-Monial

We are fanatical concert goers, well Cees is a fanatical concert searcher actually. If there is a concert worth going to within about 60km of here, he knows about it. We have been known to travel through blizzards to get home from concerts, not something I would like to repeat, but it is now summer and the concerts are plentiful, they are good and they are blizzard free.

The other week we went to a concert in Charolles. We decided to visit Paray –le-Monial before the concert, a town we really do like. The Basilica can never be visited too many times, there is just so much to see. This time we bought a book called “Les Sculptures Cachées de la Basilique” which you can get at the tourist information office and we checked out all the hidden treasures in the building - there are some amazing carvings there. Sadly my camera’s zoom is not good enough to capture them, so here’s a photo of the inside of the Basilica just to give an idea of the majesty of the place.

A tower - the only thing worth seeing in Charolles

On the other hand, we have never really “visited” Charolles. We have travelled though the town many times and we even visited the offices of our builder during the renovations, but we have never taken the time to actually look around. So this time, we decided to investigate what the town has to offer and to have dinner there. A word of advice to all you tourists or non-tourists for that matter, don’t bother, there is really nothing worth visiting in Charolles – sorry guys to trash your town, but we wandered around for a few hours, from one café to the next drinking coffee to while away the time until the restaurants opened for dinner and then on to the concert and the only thing we found was a tower in park which you couldn’t visit.

The day’s outing was really to see a concert of course and fortunately that was superb and well worth the whole trip. It was an Aretha Franklin homage concert – not my favourite type of concert as they tend to not be up to the original (how could they be?) and they are not innovative either, so they are usually the worst of both worlds, but this lady could sing and I mean SING and the band could play as well. I couldn’t understand the names of the songs as she spoke them in her French announcements, but her articulation when singing was magnificent.

Superb concert

The only negative point about the concert was the venue itself. It was far too small for the number of people in the audience and yes I know I am excessively safety conscious after my years in industry, but I don’t think that anyone can say that squashing 120 people seated into a room of 8 by 10 meters (which included space for the band and the bar) with only one exit that was blocked by chairs during the concert, is the safest of environments. Sadly for the organisers, I won’t be going to that venue again no matter how good the band is.

Claim to fame - my poster

But there was a real piece of excitement that I noticed in the bar. When we entered, I looked at the wall and couldn’t believe my eyes, my very own artwork was pinned up on the notice board! As I am not an internationally renowned artist, you must be wondering what I am talking about. A few years ago, I made a poster for a friend of a friend who plays in a rock band – Drugstore Rock . To be fair there was no artistic skill required in making this poster, just good Photoshop skills and there you have it - a poster for a rock band.

Anyway it is my claim to fame and fortune, I even felt like signing the poster, but didn’t dare of course – what a wimp!



For information about holiday accommodation near to a summer full of concerts to meet every taste click here.

In the heat of the day

Guitar festival - starts Sunday

It has been really hot the last couple of weeks, making us rather lazy, but it is getting so close to the start of the guitar festival, that today we had no other choice but to finally go out and put flyers through letter boxes.

The concerts this year look as interesting and as varied as usual, starting with a violin and a lute on Sunday. The Italian flute players are returning again to play, we have a Mexican guitar player, a Dutch trio of oboes and guitar and the festival ends with a group of Ukranian Banduras.  Not bad for a small town festival.

Delivering flyers

We got up early this morning, to try and get things done before the sun was too high and we managed four villages before we ran out of flyers and had to put a temporary stop on our work.

One of the last houses we delivered to was the “pyramid” in La Bergerie. This house is notorious for its statues of Horus with blood red eyes that scared one of the neighbours’ children and prompted the building of a horrible concrete wall round the whole property!

Contemporary art

The gate to the property has had a sign saying “Exposition espace d’art contemporain” on it for a couple of years now, but the gate has been firmly shut. When we passed today the gate was open and we were able to snap a picture of the contemporary art they have on display. I’ll leave you to make up your own mind about it.

After the second load of flyers arrived this afternoon, we were able to continue and finish Chazelle in time for the first concert this Sunday.

Café Liegeois at Les Blés d'Ors Cormatin

Well after all that work, you deserve a treat don’t you?



For information on holiday accommodation near an excellent guitar festival in Burgundy click here.

Concerts, concerts and more concerts

The new banner announces our concerts

Summer brings with it a host of music festivals in Burgundy. We are heavily involved in the Guitar en Cormatinois festival which this year is fortunately going back to its roots and each concert will have at least one guitarist in it. The series is nearing its end - there are only two more concerts to go and the season is going very well indeed. Concerts one and three were sold out, leaving us volunteers to enjoy the music from outside the church and concert two only had a few spaces left empty. It is a combination of the venue being fixed in the church in Chazelle – superb acoustics, the start times being nice and early (19.30 for the Saturday concert and 17.30 for the Sunday concert) and of course returning to having guitars in abundance, that has made this season a success. We will have to see if we actually break even or not this year as we have lost a lot of state subsidy, so fingers crossed that this festival can continue for years to come.

Biréli Lagrène in Trivy

The season is well under way as well in Chapaize where we of course enjoyed the annual Roundalay concert - a Dutch a cappella choir. We have seen Biréli Lagrène again this year in the Jazz in Trivy concert series - always a treat and a couple of weekends ago we went to a concert by a swing band in Cluny at Le Potot Gourmand who are on of the venues for the association Jazz etc. The concert was on the pricey side, but the music made up for that. It was all very accessible jazz, nothing too avant garde.

Michel Bonnet Combo in Cluny

But it is not only the professionals that give concerts, the choir of St Ythare gave a couple of concerts, we saw the one in the lovely, if peculiarly shaped, church in Savigny-sur-Guye and they did themselves proud, well done lads and lasses ! At the moment we have campers from the UK who will be performing in St Gengoux church this coming Thursday, they are part of a very new amateur choir from Oxford and from what I’ve heard, it should be worth a visit.

St Ythaire Choir

So you can see that we really are spoilt for choice at the moment and throughout this summer, I rather selfishly think that they should spread the concerts out over the year a bit more, but then I suppose it would only be us residents that would be able to enjoy all this good music.





For information on holiday accommdation in the heart of this musical area click here.

The Concert Series Comes to an End

After more than a month and five concerts, our music festival has at last come to an end.

The concert of Georges Brassens music was very well appreciated by the audience. During most of the second half and certainly by the time he got to "Les Amoureux des bancs publics", almost everyone was singing along and the artist Blahat really seemed to appreciate the interaction. The concert did though, leave me wondering what it was all about. If you read the programme, his aim was to bring the beauty of Brassens poetry and music to a new generation, but if you looked around the audience and you heard people talking after the show, these were all teenagers when Brassens was at the height of his career and whilst they may appreciate the poetry now, when they were kids, they liked the music because their parents disapproved of the lyrics! Not exactly bringing his music to a new generation.

What also disappointed me a little was that he didn’t interpret Brassens music, he played it as Brassens would have, but obviously not as well as the master himself. He kind of struck me as one of those Abba homage bands that sprung up in the nineties, but without the humour of it all. He was really was serious about what he was doing and talking to him (or to be more precise listening to him talk for hours) after the show, all he could talk about was anecdotes of when he met Brassens, and then anecdotes of what Brassens had done or said throughout his life and career. And talk he did, non-stop, for two or more hours. Not one bit of personal chit-chat, not one anecdote about his own life as a professional pianist and later as a music teacher, just anecdotes of Georges Brassens’ life and I was a left with the very sad feeling that he was living his life by proxy, but maybe that’s my psychology degree coming out in me.

In summary: a fun concert, good music, but I wish I had not spent so much time with him afterwards.

The last but one concert was Marielle Nordmann, an internationally renowned harp player. And boy could she play the harp - fantastic ! Cees has a hang-up about harps, saying all you hear is ripple, ripple, ripple and it is true, the harp lends itself to that, but coming from a Welsh background and having been to many Eisteddfods as a child, I knew the harp was much more than that. The title of the concert was “Homage to the Guitar” and she played many well-known and some less well-known guitar pieces from Spain and South America and they were quite beautiful. She used Paulo Coelho’s “The Alchemist” as a background theme to her set, quoting from the story and playing music she felt matched the various stages of the story. Not at all to my taste, particularly as I was very disappointed - when I read the book - at the apparent shallowness of its theme, but that’s just me I think. In any case, it was an original approach and the music and her playing more than compensated for that particular irritation.

The final concert was yesterday afternoon at the Plan d’Eau, Cormatin’s fishing lake and park and was a group of youngsters from Paris – OMMM. I am struggling to find words to describe them, but I’ll try. They had no instruments, so all the instrumental bits were supplied by their voices. One guy was the human beat-box (and very good he was too) and the others sang or made musical sounds, with the help of some clever sound mixing. The second guy in the group did a wonderful bagpipe version of "Ode to Joy" but sadly, he only did that during the sound check and not during the concert itself. Their music was very techo-ish/rap with some jazzy overtones, but I am sure that says more about my inability to define them, than that it gives a clear description of their music! The audience, at an average age of 60 – 70 and mostly locals, had never heard anything like it before, but rather surprisingly, the comments were positive. My feelings were that this group was out of place in our concert series, but having said that we did bring a different type of music to the population of Cormatin and that is one of our aims - so we succeeded there.

Overall the concert series has been declared a success, not one concert failed to bring a positive reaction from the audience. I am struggling to decide which was my favourite concert. It is a close run thing between the young Czech musicians in the first concert and Marielle Nordmann. I think I’ll plump for Marielle Nordmann - I really do love the harp when it is played well.

La Tuilerie Website

Audience Participation

Two superb concerts this last weekend, two violins and a piano minus one violin and the second was piano, trumpet and accordion.

The first lot of musicians were Czech. The violins were father and daughter, but father had fallen ill a few days before the concert. They couldn’t speak French so, I was asked to assist with communication. With a gîte changeover and Cees away at a family party, time was limited, this meant that misunderstandings were inevitably the order of the day. When I arrived at the concert I was met by the President of our club (the only one who has a smattering of English) who was very wound up. I need to put this in perspective, this guy is Mr laid-back-in-the-extreme, so “wound-up” was a bit alarming. He greeted me with “Did you know her father is dead?” I immediately felt guilty that I hadn’t asked after the father’s health when I had seen them earlier that afternoon and no, she hadn’t mentioned to me that he was dead. I was sent to ask. Now how do you ask if someone if their father has just died, a few minutes before that someone has to perform a demanding concert and needs all the concentration they can muster ? But I had been sent and so I gently asked after her father and was told that he wasn’t allowed to fly (well you wouldn’t be I suppose if you are dead would you?) but from the way she said it, it definitely seemed to me that the man hadn’t yet shuffled off this mortal coil.

In any case the change of program to a much more vibrant, dramatic show than had been planned, was well worth it and to be honest, father was most definitely not missed, dead or alive.

Sunday afternoon’s concert was accessible, toe tapping music (Gershwin, Bernstein) and the church was packed, all making for a great atmosphere. One of the players let the side down a bit by failing to properly polish his performance and whilst the other two were note perfect, he fudged a few bits and missed a few high notes. We had organised tickets for the people in the gites and one of them said that they thought it was the acoustics in the church that had squashed his high notes - strange that it only affected his instrument though. Having said that, the concert, as a whole, was top-notch and the whole audience was thrilled to bits with it.

As a volunteer, you get to sit right at the back in the last available chairs and I was squashed in next to an English tourist who hummed along to all the tunes - irritating. In the second half Monsieur P sat the other side of me and clicked his false teeth in time to the music – doubly irritating. But when they struck up “I Feel Pretty”, Monsieur P started to sing along and not that quietly either. I had visions of him dancing round a ladies dress shop - but that is an aside. Madame F, who was sitting diagonally in front of Monsieur P, was extremely irritated by his Natalie Wood (or Marni Nixon) impression and threw him one of her kill-at-ten-paces looks. But this man had spent 18 months in a German concentration camp and he can cope with the likes of her - he just kept going. Madame F always seems to get her own way and she is not known for the gentle side of her nature and so seeing her looking so cross, immediately took away any irritation I had with his singing and even though he murdered “Summertime” to the extent that I could hardly hear the musicians, I could tap my feet and sing silently along to the music myself.

The rest of the concerts in the series look as though they will as good as, if not better than, these two. One thing though, I will make sure I keep away from Monsieur P at the Georges Brassens concert, I can hear him singing already.


For our website with details of the gites click here.

A Woman’s Place..

I am a mechanical engineer, I have worked all my life with men, I may be physically weaker than them, but I can do blokey things within the limitations of my strength. I can put up marquees, I can change a washer, I can put a fuse in a plug, I can drive a ride-on mower, but that is behaviour that just doesn’t compute round here.

I remember the first time I turned up to help put up some marquees. Lots of strange looks and probably strange remarks, but my French was not good enough at the time to register them. To be honest I didn’t notice that I was the only woman there, and even when a woman turned up with something to eat and drink and gave me a weird look, I still didn’t register. Of course now I know better and when Cees went to put up a marquee the other morning and I had to deliver the cash boxes at 6 (yes six) o’clock in the morning, I just sat and watched. I did ask if I could do anything and our president said “Yes, you can sweep”, so sweep I did. Considering the guys were lacking in numbers and really could have done with the help, it struck me as daft, but hey I’m not French and it just confuses them, so I do it their way, well most of the time.

But sometimes I forget myself. The other evening when we were discussing who was putting out the plastic chairs in Chazelle church for the concert series Guitares en Cormatinois which starts this weekend, I suggested that I could help. “Great” said the mayor “you can sweep the floor, and get rid of the cobwebs”. So it appears that I am not even man enough to carry a chair, so sweep I did and de-cobweb I did. Everyone was very impressed with my long de-cobwebbing stick and it was declared “genial”. But again I was the one girl with the blokes and after a glass of wine I made my retreat, wishing them “bon courage” with shifting the piano, I could have helped, but I knew it would just cause tons of confusion.


Anyway, back to cleaning - a woman’s primary role. I often glean tips from campers or people in the gîtes, I have learned that the easiest way to polish a floor is to spray the cleaner on the floor then in bare feet with a duster under each foot shuffle around and there you have it, one shiny floor without an aching back. I have also learned how to keep an electric kettle looking as if it has just come out of its box, fill it with vinegar once a week or fortnight depending on use, leave it to stand for 15 minutes and empty and rinse, the vinegar can be reused. I manage to keep most things looking spick and span, but it is a constant struggle to clean the stainless taps on the campsite and to keep them looking nice. I go around with special anti-cal stuff every so often, but they soon return to “normal” with their high usage. The other day, we saw the taps in the toilet block were absolutely sparkling and we went straight to Mrs S, thanked her enormously and asked her how she had done it. She looked completely baffled. Her husband sniggered away, and then gave us his secret, put a little bit of toilet cleaner on a sponge and hey presto, no more streaks of lime on your taps.

One thing this has shown me is that maybe my thinking about stereotypes is not so different from the locals after all !

La Tuilerie Website

Interesting Instruments and Great Music.

I don’t know how the small towns round here manage to get hold of such quality musicians, but they do. The jazz festival at Trivy (a town of only 278 inhabitants, containing a beautiful church) was the very first Burgundian music festival we attended a concert at - way back in 2005. At the time, we were still working in The Netherlands and had come for a holiday to make our newly purchased house liveable.

We saw a poster announcing that Biréli Lagrène (a world-famous Manouche guitarist) was playing in this tiddly village, not too far from here and tickets could be bought from a chemist’s shop near Mâcon. So off we went to get the tickets. That was our first experience of the many music festivals this area has to offer each summer and that's why the jazz festival at Trivy has a special place in our hearts. Every year, when the new brochure comes out, we sift through the concerts to see what world-class musicians they have managed to bag. This year we saw the name of Richard Galliano and we knew we had to go.

Richard Galliano is an accordion player who manages to fit many styles into his repertoire and make them all his own. Our experience of the dreadful bands that play at parties around here, where one accordion player managed to play a waltz to a beat box tango rhythm and didn’t spot it until he had been going for about two minutes, has reduced my liking for the accordion, but just a few seconds of Richard Galliano restored my faith. He is a master, it is like he brings the instrument to life and gives it a personality of its own.

The concert started with “Tango pour Claude”, a well known tune that he wrote as homage to singer Claude Nougaro, which is a particular favourite of mine. That set the tone and we were away. During the concert, he also played an instrument called an accordina, which is a cross between an accordion and a harmonica. The concert went from strength to strength and in one piece he managed to form the sound of the sea as the accordion “breathed” - quite incredible.

The two hours, of spellbinding music, just zipped past and it was a sad moment when it was time to go home.

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Saturday Night in New York

Our season is now in full swing and Saturday night we were full - both gîtes occupied. We don’t usually organise anything for Saturday evenings, as we are rather limited by the arrival times of our guests, but we had all our fingers and toes crossed yesterday that our guests would arrive before 5 o’clock, because we wanted to go to New York for the evening. Our guests arrived at 3 o’clock, so we managed to get to the New York Metropolitan Opera House in time to see the evening’s performance of La Traviata.

Our connection to New York was via a live HD video link from the Met itself, beamed into the panoramic cinema screen at Chalon-sur-Saône. While we waited for the performance to begin, the screen showed images of the inside of the opera house, looking towards the stage as if we were in one of the circles, watching the people in the stalls finding their seats. What a magnificent place the opera house it is. Then - lights down - action.

As the orchestra struck up the overture, Violetta appeared in a red cocktail dress and sloped across the stage and I thought oh no a modern version and my heart sank. A combination of why can’t we just listen to the overture without this distraction and why can’t they stick to the “proper” version was going through my head. Having said that, I was very quickly immersed in Willy Decker’s version and I was most impressed with what he had actually done with it all. He managed to capture the essence of the story in a modern(ish) setting, leaving the décor very simple and introducing some spooky elements. He upgraded the doctor to a star position by doubling him as a sort of Grim Reaper figure who hovered around whenever Violetta had a downturn and, in all but the last scene, there was a huge clock ticking away the last hours of her life. Although I did find it odd that he totally downgraded all other parts to almost nothing.

Natalie Dessay (Violetta) had a rather shaky start in Act 1 vocally, but she regrouped in Acts 2 and 3 in which she did a superb job and Matthew Polenzani as Alfredo and Dmitri Hvorostovsky as his father did a stunning job throughout. Although Violetta is supposed to be the star of the show, it was Alfredo all the way for me, he sang beautifully, he acted beautifully and I was totally convinced at all stages that he was Alfredo.

Then, after a wonderful evening in one of the world’s best opera houses, we just had to drive half an hour and we were home. This won’t be the last time we are going to New York for the evening.

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Festival Guitares en Cormatinois

The Guitares en Cormatinois concert season has ended, all the planning and preparing of flyers and posters, delivering and posting them in strategic places has been done, collecting and putting out chairs, shifting grand pianos and manning the ticket sales is all over and we have our Saturday evenings back ! But we have really enjoyed the last few months of work and in particular the last month of concerts. The series used to be dedicated to bringing guitar music to “the people” but has now moved on to include a wider range of artists playing different instruments. Never-the-less there are always guitars somewhere in the series. This year three out of the five concerts were with guitar.

The first concert was with Alexander Baty who played the trumpet amazingly and at just 27 he has a very promising career ahead of him, he has already landed a job with the Amsterdam Concert Gebouw Orkest one of the top three orchestras in the world. His accompanist Véronique Goudia did a sterling job on the piano, but the acoustics of Cormatin Church let her down and so what should have been echoing sounds coming from the piano were rather tinny. Even so, the concert was excellent and very enjoyable.

On the 2nd July, Emmanuel Rossfelder (who is a yearly crowd-puller) was playing the Concerto d’Aranjuez with a group of 18 flutists. The open air venue of the ruin of St Hippolyte Deanery was a superb backdrop to the concert, but I must agree with Cees’ son when he heard what we were going to see when he said “does anyone need to listen to 18 flute players playing the Concerto d’Arajuez?” A number of the group had difficulty keeping pace with the music and hitting the high notes and this did not bring out the best in Rossfelder who somehow seemed to lose interest during the proceedings – a pity as he is really a superb player.

Adèle Bracco (vocals) and Thierry Moncheny (guitar) were supposed to also have had the open-air venue for their Brazilian Jazz concert but sadly, due to rain, they had to be moved to Bonnay church which had disastrous acoustics. No matter what they did during the sound check they could not get a clear sound beyond the third pillar and as volunteers we seat ourselves at the last minute and way back in the church. Whilst the music I could actually hear wasn’t exactly to my taste, I thought it was a good idea to include a guitar with a different music style to the purely classical that the festival tends towards.

The “local” venue for us was when Gérard Poulet (violin) and Dimitris Saroglou (piano) played Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms sonatas in Chazelle church. Although it is a somewhat scruffy looking church from the inside, the acoustics were sublime and the music was of a world-class standard. Normally towards the end of a concert I am fidgeting because of the ubiquitously un-comfy seats, but this concert kept me enthralled and I forget to even think about my numb bottom ! We were rewarded by two well received encores.

The last concert of the season was last night in Malay church. A lovely little Romanesque church a few minutes outside Cormatin. We have seen a number of concerts there, but we have always been early and sat on the plastic chairs placed at the front of the church or in the first row. Sitting at the back, the pews were absolutely “unsittable” and whilst the sound was still excellent, I had to move and walk around for a bit as the I started to get a serious pain in my back. In the end I found myself a cosy little spot behind a pillar and as I am too short to ever see the performers in a concert unless I am right at the front, it didn’t actually bother me at all not being able to see anything. What was amazing was that even though I was more than 20 meters away from the guitar player with at least two pillar between us, I could actually hear him breathing, so impressive are the acoustics in this venue. In any case Trio Alto (guitar, violin and cello) delighted the audience to an evening of soft classical music that I can only describe as light, romantic chamber-like music. The guitar was strung and played in such a way that it sounded very much like a harpsichord which beautifully accompanied this style of music. Once I had found my comfy spot, I could have listened to them all night.

All in all a good series, 3 out of 5 concerts were out of this world and even though I could have lived without the other two, the St-Hippolyte venue was worth it for the ambiance. Now all we have to do is start the planning and organising for next year !

Our accommodation near Cluny and Taizé: La Tuilerie Website