Fun as Yellowjackets (yellow vests) are back in Paris after many years, while in the streets, «our» yellow vests appear. Doubly fun because they will play Saturday night, usual day parades canary. The atmosphere will be cool no doubt. But who are these jackets yellow americans? Little is known in France, these are the stars who can boast of having been nominated seventeen times at the Grammy Awards, they have won twice. Their latest album, Raising Our Voice (Mack Avenue Records), is rather a success, but it does not make us forget the almost forty years of creativity of this training after Los Angeles.
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She emerged in the early 1980s and a handful of passionate French jazz fusion venerate her in the same way as Stanley Clarke or Return To Forever, Weather Report or Jaco Pastorius. The son of the famous basiste Felix Pastorius, bass player himself, has also worked in Yellowjackets, since replaced by the impressive Dane Alderson.
Spirit of california
Two of the founders of the group, Russell Ferrante (keyboards) and Bob Mintzer (saxophone), are still there. With wrinkles and more hair in less, they’re now on the return of a style and a sound that had become familiar to scoff at (too complicated, too cold, too much power…). A new generation of musicians, fed rock and funk as much as jazz, classical, rediscovered the virtues of this music, «whose compositions are smart, that are often difficult and unpredictable, is inspired by the fusion of post-bop and contemporary jazz,» explains seriously the magazine JazzTimes.
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Yellowjackets is indeed all this, but also education in the spirit of california, that is to say, very conscious of labels or codes, while keeping this side perfectly cool like the thread to be the most robust for tracking the production of those musicians prolific.
New Morning 7-9, rue des Petites-Écuries (Xe).Tel.: 01 45 23 51 41. Date: on the 1st of June at 20: 30. Up: 28,10 €.
