The duo Blaz plays a dinner-show at the Café Breton for the Perros-Guirec Jazz Festival. David Hopkins and Clément Vallin work from original compositions between jazz, world music and contemporary sound. Improvisation carries the set: percussion, bass and samples build groove and dance rhythms close to trance. The café cooks its own food; a 10 € artistic contribution per person helps compensate the artists and support a festival dedicated to traditional music.
Region: Brittany
Kayak à la tombée de la nuit sur le Guic
Dusk sets the hour for this descent of the Guic, the river presented as emblematic of Belle-Isle-en-Terre. Paddlers follow the water downstream with the sounds of the valley around them, watching for wildlife as the evening light settles on the banks. Guiding comes from the Aquarium des Curieux de Nature, the commune’s nature interpretation centre, together with the Station Sports Nature. Les Minutes Bleues, now in its fifth edition, places the outing among the dusk slots it opens across heritage sites of the Côtes d’Armor, from age six with an adult and from twelve alone; booking is strongly advised.
Visite des huîtres Le Cha on the Aber-Wrac’h
Hollow oysters raised in the Baie des Anges, beside the port of the Aber-Wrac’h, are the subject of this visit to the Le Cha oyster yard. The tour sets out how those cupped oysters are brought on, and a tasting follows on site. The farm also keeps a shop for oysters to take away, an oyster bar and a vending machine. It runs within the Economic Tourism and Craftsmanship Weeks, with the takings from the tickets going to the Brittany Heritage Foundation.
Marguerite Sérusier’s motifs, taken up in thread
The Musée Sérusier in Châteauneuf-du-Faou houses several pieces made by Marguerite Sérusier. From the same town, the association Broderies Traditionnelles / Broerezhiou Gizh Koz ar Vro invites participants to recreate the artist’s designs in embroidery, and each takes home their own creation. The one skill asked beforehand is knowing how to hold and thread a needle. Twelve places are open, from fifteen years upwards, and reservation is required.
Chantons avec nos jeunes enfants, in French and Breton
The École de Musique Danse Théâtre du Kreiz Breizh sings with parents and children under three at the library of Plouguernével. Songs, comptines and finger games run in French and in Breton, as Kanomp gant hor bugale vihan. Nobody has to sing well: parents hand their own top-50 rhymes round. It is one of twenty-four free meetings the Communauté de communes du Kreiz Breizh spreads over twelve communes, run here with the association RAOK.
Concert de Noël de l’Ensemble Choral du Bout du Monde
The Ensemble Choral du Bout du Monde sings its Christmas concert in the parish church of Saint-Michel at Lesneven. The ensemble states that its first vocation is to promote the Breton language, and it carries the Breton name Laz-kanañ Penn ar Bed. It gathers more than eighty choristers and a dozen musicians under the direction of Gwenn An Dreo. The programme sets original compositions beside arrangements of Breton, Welsh and Celtic songs.
Rock-sur-Meu: an all-Breton bill in Montfort
Four Breton rock acts share the bill at the Salle du Confluent in Montfort-sur-Meu. Sons O’Flaherty play Celtic rock, Apes O’Clock brass rock, Xarpi grunge and Sinbad a French strain of alternative rock. Food, drink and vendor booths run alongside the sets, with entertainment through the evening. The festival returns to the same hall after a previous bill that drew more than four hundred people, and its line-up is Breton from end to end.
Aber Wrac’h Odyssée: La Route des Phares
Four lighthouses of the Aber Wrac’h archipelago set the route: the two towers of the Île Vierge, the light of the Île Wrac’h and the Lanvaon tower. Hervé skippers the boat, grandson of a semaphorist at Aber Wrac’h and from a family of Plouguerneau boat builders. He explains how lighthouses and coastal buoyage work, and carries the memory of shipwrecks and shipwreckers. The run passes the Wrac’h, Stagadon and Vierge islands close to the water.
Ormeaux bretons at the France Haliotis sea farm
France Haliotis rears Breton ormeaux in open water at Aod Kerazan Vihan, on the Aber Wrac’h in northern Finistère. The farmers walk visitors through their trade, from the beds held out in the sea to the work done back on shore. The stock eats nothing but algues cut by hand along this same coast, and the holding stands as the only abalone farm of its kind in France. A booking is required, because the small team leads each round itself.
B.R.E.T.O.N.S, Breton Music in Trad-Rock
B.R.E.T.O.N.S gathers fourteen artists around one aim: keeping Breton music alive by playing it with contemporary energy. The set threads traditional tunes of Brittany, Ireland and Scotland through the standards of Celtic music, arranged with trad-rock leanings. Bombards, bagpipes, violin, guitars, percussion and voices share the stage. The players come out of Kervegans, Digresk, EV and Soldat Louis, beside the singer Jessica Delot.