Chris Potter and Circuits: A Mind-Blowing Jazz Experience at the Nouveau festival Radio France

2023-07-24 13:33:00

If the Sunday event at the Nouveau festival Radio France was of course the concert of MC Solaar in great formation (and in even greater form), it was to the American saxophonist Chris Potter who opened the “jazz” section with his electric trio Circuits, that we had the most insane slap.

At first, we were a little dazzled by the still high sun. But very quickly it was Chris Potter’s trio, even higher, who blinded us! What amazement! On Sunday, at 7 p.m. sunburn (and a few, due to a very small organizational problem), the serious things of the “jazz” section of the New Radio-France Festival. Think, Chris Potter, brilliant American saxophonist, among the best tenors of the last thirty years, in concert on the forecourt of the Château d’O, in Montpellier, for seven tiny euros! Obviously the meeting was sold out, and the public, a broad smile, which had perhaps beforehand taken advantage of the groovy pre-concert proposed by De Phase, or the electro set ma non troppo by Azu Tiwaline which closed the “Tohu-Bohu” section.

A spectacular and adventurous drummer

Yet, faced with the Montpellier madness of the middle of the 18th century, it was still madness. Less mineral. More visceral. And probably less cerebral than is often presupposed in contemporary jazz. Chris Potter did not come to give a lesson but to administer one, of shared pleasure and jubilant freedom. For this, he found playmates commensurate with his genius for improvisation. On a drum kit of a sobriety inversely proportional to the intoxication he draws from it, Eric Harland develops cubist grooves that are never abstruse, luminous and tortuous like lightning bolts in a summer sky. Accompanied by a science of the cymbal, his playing all in accelerations, suspensions and variations on his toms does not slow us down, on the contrary, hooks us like a sport fisherman, who works his swordfish (we, the public, follow) before taking it out of the water, exhausted but happy (for the swordfish, we are less sure). And Harland to punctuate his job with gasps of satisfaction. He can. It’s insane.

A bassist and progressive keyboardist

On keyboards, the hefty James Francies will undoubtedly have been more diversely perceived. It must be recognized that to possess obviously enormous academic knowledge, the young prodigy is not orthodox. Running with his right hand like Usain Bolt between several synthesizers and his grand piano, he strikes with the left like Mohamed Ali a kind of bass keyboards. Sometimes the pulse produced by his left swing is so fast and voluminous that it turns drone heavy, nearly drowning out the lyricism under its rolls of/thunder. The next moment, Francies can send a theme into a sci-fi hyperspace, between jazz-rock and afro progressive, or even offer a model of New York-style jazz elegance and freshness on the piano. Impossible to get tired of the inventiveness of this monster, which is in full expansion!

A genius leader

Finally, what regarding Chris Potter that others (starting with his saxophonist colleague and festival mascot, Emile Parisien) would probably say much better? We already appreciate the lack of manners of the 52-year-old Chicagoan. Nothing of a show, of an ostentation or of a pause in its setting and its pace. An ordinary guy, what, who smiles cushy before grabbing his tenor and without ever betraying the slightest kind of effort, to make connective hallucinations squirt out of it! In its long flow of notes sometimes arise erudite reminiscences, from classical to jazz, which never make their clever but naughty, yes. This guy plays like a god and like a child, in the same breath, it’s beautiful to cry. And absolutely enjoyable to follow!

Morality: while the sun, having understood that it was not the weight, has long gone to hide in shame behind the castle of O, it is an audience standing, dazzled, inflamed, red as a crayfish, dazzled who claimed more. And that he got it. Quiet, Chris Potter revived a theme, his comrades followed him into the unknown. And the sun, definitely disgusted, went to bed.

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