This is the Second edition of the most enjoyable free event in Aix-en Provence at the end of August!
I am back from the first evening of" Musique dans la Rue" Festival, so happy I could share this evening with the girls who both study music!`
(piano and flute). They are beginners. They love singing and join the school of music choir too!
So we sat quietly in Cour Maynier d'Oppède which is nearly all refurbished. The
Travelling Quartet offered a selection of the Beatles tunes, some really well disguised in the classical arrangements. Some could be hummed along like "Hello, Good Bye" and "Yesterday"they made the girls happy, but I did not recognise Strawberry Field... A string quartet has a very soothing effect. Their Blackbird rendition was stunning.
The photo seems to show a much younger alto violinist than the picture either on the site or in their record. They were very passionate in their job and smiling to the audience! The girls were delighted to be so near them! So was I, being so used to sitting at the back in expensive opera houses...here and there! On Sunday I will be on my way to Salzburg ... I have a strange ticket for Makropoulos Affair.. it is going to be the last minute surprise... certainly not the front row!)
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Then we walked down Rue de Saporta to Place
d'Albertas,
where we stood on the pavement opposite the fountain and met an unusual clarinet sextet,
Sextuor de clarinettes Arundo:
Frédéric Mouron
Caroline Aubert
Daniel Bimbi
Romain Carlet
Franck Raciti
Christophe Sicard
Explanations on each clarinet in this family were given to us by the group leader who played the bass clarinet.
The half an hour concert (or so) was moving, with a true bohemian O Chichornia, and three Klezmer tunes.
I love Klezmer music and dream of going to Cracow one day. But there it was 'my dream come true', they were really authentic, what I think is the tradition. They reminded me of the splendid clarinet I heard played in Rouen by the ever so crafty
Helios Azoulay...
Tonight the clarinet soprano laughed and cried with agility too, while the bass ones sobbed gently in the background for the second tune...
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For the opening day of the free concert festival in the streets, it was a cross between folk music and classical, very pleasant to listen to, either under the plane trees of Hotel Maynier d'Oppède, trying to find a slight cool breeze at the end of another stifling day, or on Place d'Albertas where I always imagine Rosina spying through the shutters, trying to see the serenade under her balcony... (Last year, at the same period a strong mistral was blowing and it was almost like autumn, what strange, upset weather, as moody as the economy of our country!).
Some thoughts from my student days around here: Saint-Sauveur Cathedral, Maynier d'oppède and Town- hall:
Hotel Meynier d'Oppède in the 60s was a university college and there I read what was called "propédeutique", American studies, philosophy and English, which was an exam we had to take to prove we had the required level to undertake university studies. I had a wonderful year spent mainly reading at the Méjanes Library in the Town Hall near by, a marvellous old room where imposing carved bookshelves offered whatever you wanted to read, in a quiet environment which smelt of bee-wax and was heated in the winter, a good welcoming spot really when my diggs down Rue Bédarrides had no heating possibility. The librarian was a charming elderly gentleman, very keen on Provençal language who always wore a spotted black and white Lavallière. We were next to the Cathedral which, in those days, had the cloister always open, nearly every day I picnicked there, gazing at the enclosed small garden, the carved figures on the pillars, and the sky above the golden bell tower, as the stone in bright sun shine looks like honey, this particular pierre de Rognes (a village round the corner) seems to reflect sunshine.
When the new university was built we had to go to the new site out of the center, and it had never been the same. I had lost the magic of Aix !
