Elegant gypsies
Spring can really hang you up the most, Chaka Khan once sang in “Echoes of an Era.” With Chick Corea on piano, Stanley Clarke on bass, Henderson and Hubbard on horns, and the universe conspiring to make one heartrending album of standards and such. But nothing to get “hung about” in one the shows in this year’s French Spring in Manila featuring two elegant gypsies (one in a white blazer, the other in black vest and scarf) reinterpreting standards with the help of a magnificent sax player and a pianist with restraint and taste.
Boulou and Elios Ferré performed last Thursday at the Grand Sunset Pavilion of the Sofitel Philippine Plaza Hotel, and it was a such a treat. Especially for those who could only dream of watching the likes of John McLaughlin, Al Di Meola and Paco de Lucia do re-readings of standards and classical pieces, throwing in bits of flamenco, bossa nova, tango and rock ‘n’ roll to the mix.
Just after pianist David Stark and saxophonist Tots Tolentino played a set (performing tracks such as Caravan, I Hear a Rhapsody, and All the Things You Are), the Ferré brothers opened with a track that required some serious finger-stretching, low drones that morph from “a minor fall to a major lift,” natural harmonics, counterpoints, percussive passages, playing in unison, bends, trills, arpeggios, jaw-dropping sweeps, liberal quotes from popular pieces such as Star Wars and Indiana Jones theme tunes — all in the first song. What a baffling display of guitar virtuosity (even to those who’d think that the legendary gypsy jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt is a Clint Eastwood character in one of his spaghetti westerns).
Boulou and Elios are the sons of Matelo Ferré, who played with the great Django in Quintette du Hot Club de France. With his brothers Baro and Sarane, Matelo formed a seminal trio that contributed in shaping French-style jazz classified under labels such as “jazz gitan, swing musette or jazz manouche.” With elders such as them, no wonder Boulou and Elios gravitated toward the guitar, exploring all kinds of musical styles as purveyed by everyone from Django to Charlie “Bird” Parker to Dizzy Gillespie. Boulou says in the book Django’s Gypsies: The Mystique of Django Reinhardt and His People, “The link between Django and my family is an artistic one. Django, with my father and my uncles, was a bit like the Pope and his bishops. Something like a trinity, religious and ritualistic.”
Boulou heard a Johann Sebastian Bach piece one night and it changed his life. When he was 13, Boulou played in a festival that featured John Coltrane. Lore has it that when the young guitarist asked Trane for advice, the jazz legend told him to keep playing with passion. Boulou went on to play with the likes of Dexter Gordon and T-Bone Walker when they toured France, as well as Dizzy Gillespie himself.
A pianist at first, Elios discovered Jimi Hendrix and he tried replicating that Fender-through-a-Marshall-amp tone in “Are You Experienced?” But eventually, he found his way back to Django and the tradition of gypsy guitar-playing. Elios played with another astounding guitar player, Larry Coryell, before hooking up with brother Boulou in the acclaimed duo.
From the Ferrés’ first album “Pour Django” in ’79 up to the present, Boulou and Elios have experimented with electric guitars and played; dabbled in trios and quartets with horns, drums and piano (receiving a Django d’Or award for their “Parisian Passion” release in 2006); but still remain faithful to the exploratory nature of jazz. In one interview, Elios said jazz is “living music and one cannot simply copy and recreate it but must step beyond it and make it new.”
That is exactly what the duo displayed at the French Spring gig: to make gypsy jazz music sound contemporary and aurally fresh while tipping the hat to Bird, Bach, Miles, Lennie Tristano and, of course, Django.
Interesting the interplay between the Ferré brothers: Boulou was the consummate jazz guitarist, while Elios was the flamenco rocker. But the highlight of the evening was when Stark and Tolentino joined the band of brothers and did a jaw-dropping reading of Donna Lee.
Donna Lee is a bebop standard popularized by Bird, allegedly written by Miles Davis, revisited by avant-garde saxophonist Anthony Braxton, and reinterpreted by Jaco Pastorius. That track played on fretless Fender Jazz bass with congas by Don Alias opens Jaco’s self-titled 1976 debut. Really hard shit to play. But the foursome navigated through the changes with deftness: first the head, then Tots took up a solo, followed by Stark and Boulou, then back to head as a resolution.
Next track was the evocative Body and Soul. Two of my favorite recordings of Body and Soul are the versions of Thelonious Monk (from “Monk’s Dream”) and the charming one recorded by Billie Holiday with a voice on the brink of being broken by cigarettes and sadness, Lady Day in autumn (with, I believe, Ben Webster on sax). It is always a treat to watch jazz artists start a song, deconstruct it, and then go back to the main riff. The Ferré brothers, Tots and David, did the same with the standard There Will Never Be Another You, which Tito O. Mina popularized on our shores by writing Filipino lyrics, Ikaw Pa Rin. (Guys like Dexter Gordon, Lionel Hampton and Sonny Rollins did recordings of this tune.)
Stellar playing by Tots: working with the reed with modal runs, growls, squawks, overtones, vibratos, and indelible melodies; playing with finesse in one run, and then playing fiercely in another. Stark provided the counterpoint. Then the brothers resolved the tune with a fast, passionate run across the fretboard.
Like chasing the Trane.
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The gig was presented by Alliance Française, the French Embassy and Nokia. Nokia corporate communications manager Nikka Abes says, “By sponsoring different sorts of events that have to do with a lifestyle — be that fashion, design, the arts, cuisine, culture and music, we’d like to think we connect people to their chosen lifestyle. We collaborated with Alliance Française in some of their French Spring ’08 events like the very unique culinary art exhibit called ‘Deguste’ at the
The event was also supported by Sofitel Philippine Plaza, Jewelmer, Bank of the Philippine Islands, M. Lhuillier and Air France-KLM. It was a much-anticipated highlight of the French Spring Manila, an annual celebration of the French and Filipino relationship through a series of multi-cultural events and performances in Metro Manila. For information on the French Spring in
