Sweet Mama brings blues, swing, boogie-woogie and calypso to Sens with a line-up led by Catherine “Cajoune” Girard. Her washboard and voice join guitar, violin and double bass, with kazoo and slide whistle adding further colours. The quartet shapes its own arrangements around influences including Charlie Christian, Stuff Smith and Fats Waller, drawing on jazz and blues repertoire.
Tag: Jazz
Touraine Jazz Festival Concert
This Touraine Jazz Festival evening carries live jazz into the village hall at Francueil. The concert format keeps attention on ensemble playing, rhythmic exchange and the distinctive relationship between musicians and a nearby audience. As part of a regional festival, the stop gives a smaller commune a place within Touraine’s wider musical circuit, showing that jazz does not belong only to large urban stages. Listeners experience the music in a social setting where detail, improvisation and collective energy can register at close range. The event’s identity comes from that meeting of an international musical language with local cultural infrastructure. It is a focused festival occasion: one community, one stage and a shared listening experience shaped by the circulation of jazz across the Loire valley.
Off Touraine Jazz Festival
The Off programme of Touraine Jazz Festival brings free concerts to the open-air stage at Montlouis-sur-Loire’s Village Gourmand. Artists and bands range across different jazz styles and eras, making discovery part of the experience across many musical languages. The informal setting gives audiences room to arrive, listen and move between sets while keeping careful listening central. Food stands place regional hospitality and local flavours beside the stage and turn the esplanade into a welcoming social meeting point. As the accessible counterpart to the festival’s indoor programme, the Off keeps jazz connected with public space, shared meals and the everyday cultural life of Montlouis for residents and travelling music lovers alike.
Emergences: Oasis Boom and Bodies
At the Bateau Ivre in Tours, Oasis Boom and Bodies form a double bill built around adventurous rhythm and electronic texture. Mélissa Acchiardi and Vincent Duchosal shape Oasis Boom from desert rock, hypnotic techno, maloya and Mandinka influences. Percussive synthesisers, prepared guitar and handmade sonic details keep the duo’s music poised between improvisation and a strong dance impulse. Bodies arrives from the Brussels jazz scene with saxophone, synthesisers, bass and drums, bringing acoustic interplay into an electronically inflected language. Heard together, the projects reveal two distinct ways of crossing genre boundaries: one driven by hybrid groove and altered guitar, the other by ensemble experimentation rooted in contemporary jazz in live performance.
Charlotte Planchou and Mark Priore
Charlotte Planchou and Mark Priore form an intimate duo in Le Carillon, where song enters a flexible jazz framework. Alongside voice and piano stands an old mechanical carillon once owned by Planchou’s grandmother, treated as an active character within the music. Its measured chimes interrupt, answer and colour the songs, adding a dreamlike, almost cinematic layer to the performance. The same idea shapes the duo’s album, but the concert remains open to change, with repertoire and interpretation adapting to the room. Priore’s playing and Planchou’s vocal presence favour detail over display, keeping emotion close to the grain of each song. At Le Blanc, the encounter becomes a live conversation among two musicians and an inherited object whose sound carries memory into a contemporary musical language.
Akoda ft Géraldine Laurent at Festival Éclats d’Émail
At the Théâtre de l’Union in Limoges, Akoda joins saxophonist Géraldine Laurent in the orbit of Festival Éclats d’Émail, a jazz setting known for sustained dialogue with artists from Nouvelle-Aquitaine and beyond. The concert draws on Creole and Caribbean rhythms, improvisation and a long-running ensemble sound, giving the festival a bright meeting point between jazz writing and island-inflected movement. That continuity is the strongest angle: Eclats d’Email is not only booking a group, but following an artistic path across several years.
Endro Concert in Guilvinec: Celtic Harp Duo
Endro brings Celtic harp and guitar together in a close musical dialogue at Guilvinec. Klervi Rouyer and Neven Le Pennec shape pieces around travel and the sea, combining delicate melody with the harp’s lower register and the guitar’s rhythmic colour. Improvisation opens their Breton and Celtic foundations to touches of jazz, funk, South American and African sound.
Maisons-Laffitte Jazz Festival 2026
Maisons-Laffitte Jazz Festival 2026 runs from 19 to 28 June 2026 at Château de Maisons, Maisons-Laffitte, France. The listing identifies it as a jazz festival with live performances in Maisons-Laffitte.
Music Festival at Domaine d’Harcourt: Community Celebration
On June 20, 2026, Domaine d’Harcourt will host its first music festival from 3 PM to 9 PM, offering a diverse range of performances in a friendly atmosphere. Kicking off the event, the Beaumont Choir Vocal Ensemble, under the direction of Sylvain Roussel, will delight attendees with French chansons featuring classics from Brel and Bourvil. From 5 PM to 7 PM, an open jam session invites local musicians to collaborate and showcase their talents alongside participants from the Conservatoire Musique et Danse de Grand-Couronne et Petit-Couronne, focusing on jazz standards. The festival’s highlight will be a concert by the Bernese band Burning Soul from 7:30 PM to 9 PM, with lead singer Véronique delivering soulful covers from the 60s, including hits by Etta James and Stevie Wonder, complemented by expressive guitar riffs and harmonica solos. Experience a celebration of music and community in Normandy.
Gabi Hartmann in Deauville: Album Launch Concert
Gabi Hartmann, a leading voice in contemporary jazz, will perform at Les Franciscaines in Deauville on August 1, 2026. Known for her unique blend of jazz, soul, and world music, Hartmann’s latest album, “La femme aux yeux de sel,” tells a poetic story centered on an imaginary heroine. With over 20 million listens to her debut album, she’s quickly become a notable figure in the music scene. Hartmann has performed at major festivals like Jazz à Vienne and the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal. This concert promises a memorable evening for both devoted fans and newcomers alike, as she explores deep emotional themes through her music.