I Prefer Paris

Stacey Kent at L’Olympia

I can sum up Stacey Kent’s concert last night at L’Olympia in two words: Intelligent Jazz.

Intelligence was the word running through my mind all as I thoroughly enjoyed every moment of this perfect evening of musical bliss. Stacey Kent has all the essential elements of a remarkable jazz singer: great song choices, unique phrasing, a strong, flawless quartet accompanying her, and most important of all, a smooth, effortless, honey-dripped voice. But her thoughtfulness in every word, gesture, and song is what makes her special.

She opened with a song that I love that is rarely performed, “So Many Stars”, so right away I was sold.

Petite and gamin-like with short cropped hair and an elegant, simple black dress, she reminded me of the genre of what I call the quiet, classy, white singers from the 1950’s & 60’s that included Anita O’Day, Irene Kral and Blossom Dearie, whos style contrasted the bolder scat styles of Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, and Betty Carter.

Another trademark of a great singer is the ability to seamlessly switch song genres and styles, and she went from sexy “Samba Saravah”, to a quirky “Show Me” from “My Fair Lady”, to Stevie Nicks “Landslide”, to a breathy French version of “I Wish You Love”, effortlessly. Most of the selections were from her new “Breakfast on a Morning Tram” CD, and she sang some original songs that her husband and saxophonist Jim Tomlinson wrote with Kazuo Ishiguro, including “ The Ice Hotel”, a smart, romantic ballad destined to be a standard.

The crowd loved her as much as I did and at the end of the concert, after an eternity of thunderous applause, she graciously sang four more specialties for her encore.

The now meaningless and mundane “What a Wonderful World”, overused as an anthem in commercials selling beer and diuretics, was transformed into a reflective, poetic ballad and it made me rediscover the beauty of the song.

Stacey Kent, you have a major new fan.

Here are some sample tracks from the CD. Enjoy!
The Ice Hotel
Samba Saravah
What a Wonderful World

www.staceykent.com

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour
includes many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.

Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com

 

Le Jazz Hot

I was working from my apartment on Sunday afternoon and started to hear some jazz music playing in the background, thinking it was my partner putting on some music. I listened for a few more minutes, really enjoying what I was listening to, but realized my partner never plays music like this. I asked him what it was, and he blankly stared at me saying it wasn’t him but it was live music being played downstairs on the street. I looked out the window on St. Paul square and there were two musicians jamming away, one on an upright piano and the other on the saxophone. I immediately went downstairs to hear the lively and foot stomping melodies. A large crowd gathered, swinging to the music. They played a combination American classic jazz and swing tunes. Here is a video clip of them playing September Song.Enjoy !

You may buy their CD’s on their website:
www.olivierfranc.com

Download september_song.mov
Please be patient as it may take a few minutes to download
Video clip courtesy of Vincent Gagliostro

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour
includes many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.

Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com

 

The Rolling Stones A Bigger Bang Tour: Pleased to Meet You,Paris

Another Paris first: My first rock concert. Mick Jagger and The Rolling Stones performed, frolicked, jammed, teased, and tantalized tout Paris last night at the Stade de France.

Vincent, my partner and I took the RER D, which is the Paris commuter railway, to the concert. By the looks of what everyone was wearing, most people on the train were going to the concert. The sweetest site was a young 20-something guy wearing a rolling Stones T-shirt with an older man in his late 70’s who was probably his grandfather, father, or uncle. I hope I have cutie like that to take me to rock concerts when I am in my 70’s. The stadium was about a twenty -minute walk from the station as I bitched and moaned in my New York style about why they couldn’t build the stadium closer to the station.

The Stade de France is a massive outdoor stadium much like Shea Stadium in New York. Although we had good seats, the stage was hundreds of feet away in this anything but intimate setting. It was a sultry night with dark clouds threatening rain and we were lucky to be sitting in seats that had a roof over us. As we waited for the show to start, we perused the crowd and were amused by all the variations of the lips & tongue logo on Tee-shirts, jackets, light-up pins, tank tops, etc. the audience was wearing.

In typical rock concert fashion, it was 9PM and we were patiently waiting for the 7:30PM show to start. Rock concert behavior is universal, and the crowd got restless and started to do a series of waves. Refusing to participate by folding my arms against my chest, I laughed at the naiveté of the crowd believing that by doing waves, the Stones would come out sooner. Fat Chance!

The Stones rolled out at 9:30PM (sorry, that pun was too good to pass up) preceded by a bells and whistles show of fireworks and colored lights. The boys were in fine form, looking and sounding great. Mick especially looked good as he just turned 63 two days before and it was apparent he didn’t look like a senior citizen who was going to retire and collect his social security anytime soon. Keith Richards brilliantly performed two solo songs on guitar dressed in a Kelly green shirt and purple sequins headband. He looked like he recovered just fine from the Fiji tree falling incident. I know the Stones have an eternal youthful spirit, but what the hell was a sixty plus man doing climbing a tree?

They did mostly crowd pleasing classic songs including You Can’t Always Get What You Want, Honky Tonk Woman, Miss You, Jumping Jack Flash, and Brown Sugar. The highlight of the evening was a fierce blues driven cover of Ray Charles’s Nighttime is the Right Time, with an electrifying solo by one of the female back-up singers (Unfortunately I can’t locate her name anywhere, so if anybody knows who she is, please post it as a comment). The only thing that was missing was a few more ballads and I longed to hear Angie. They finished with a bang with Satisfaction, which the audience had more than “got”.

I’m a lucky guy having been able to see the world’s greatest rock band in the world’s greatest city.