This was the 21st edition of the festival which is run by the Plages Magnetiques organisation in Brest. The organisation and the festival was built up successfully by the always energetic Janick Tilly, but she stepped down earlier this year to concentrate on building up her own company and her teaching of Arts Administration at the University of Brest. This year’s festival continued her approach and philosophy.
The festival has in recent years based its programme on international partnerships, initially with Chicago, then Montreal and for the past three years with Brazil. These partnerships have involved visits to the partner city or country, research into the local scene there and the formation of joint groups to perform both at the Atlantic Festival and in the partner city or country. With a three-year duration, these are genuine partnerships in which new groups are formed and original music created.
The music scene in Brazil lends itself particularly well to a collaborative project of this type. There are so many different styles of music in that vast country, drawing on many influences, African music, indigenous music, Latin rhythms, jazz, so it was no surprise that there was in this year’s programme a genuine and meaningful fusion of jazz with elements of Brazilian music.
The main project was with the Ensemble Nautilis group led by clarinettist Christophe Rocher whose four members joined four Brazilian musicians to form the Abajur group. The music has been developed through visits to São Paulo in Brazil in the last couple of years and three days of rehearsal in Brest. Each member of the group contributed compositions and it was clear that a really strong group dynamic had developed. The original compositions made very effective use of the voice of JuçaraMarçal, vocalist with the Meta Meta group, the clarinets and bass clarinet of Rocher and the two drums of Marício Takara and Nicolas Pointard. These compositions were open enough to allow for collective free improvisation, often led by Rocher with quirky interventions from Lello Bezerra on guitar. There were also duets between the two guitarists, Bezerra and Cristelle Sery, the two bass players, Frédéric B. Briet and Clara Bastos. For the encore they played a tune by Hermeto Pascoal, and in a sense the spirit of Hermeto underpinned the whole performance.
The music can clearly develop further and the group is off to Brazil this week to continue the project.

One of the drummers, Marício Takara, also appeared in a duo with Carla Boregas on turntable and synths. Takara led with a mix of melodic and abstract rhythmic ideas which were complemented by the gentle sounds from the synths.
Another mix of jazz and Brazilian music came in Paal Nilssen-Love’s New Brazilian Funk. Nilssen-Love is at the heart of the improvised music scene in Norway, but has developed a strong interest in Brazilian music as a result of visits to that country. The music of this group is highly rhythmic with Nilssen-Love’s drums always leading, but it moves between the funk and free improvisation with various interesting interactions, notably between Frode Gjerstad’s free playing on the alto saxophone and Paulinho Bicolor’s cuica, the percussion instrument that has a high pitch sound controlled by a stick
Nilssen-Love also played a 45 minute solo drum set in a small record shop, Bad Seeds. His ability to create a coherent narrative through a mixture of melodic and rhythmic ideas on the kit and various shakers and whistles was stunning; particularly memorable was a short passage where he played with two sticks on the high hat cymbals while also operating it with his foot
A session in the spacious former shipyard , Les Capucins, offered dance lessons in forró, a music and dance from the North East of Brazil, followed by a gig . This was another interesting fusion in that the music seemed to owe as much to Breton folk music as to Brazilian forró, the dance likewise.
The final concert of the festival, a solo set from guitarist and vocalist Marcel Powell, son of Brazilian jazz icon Baden Powell. He took us into more familiar musical territory, the gentle rhythms of Brazilian music of the 1960s and the engaging sounds of bossa nova. Most pieces featured solo guitar, but Powell would occasionally perform a song in that inimitable sound of choro and bossa nova. There was, however, a lot of improvisation in Powell’s guitar playing, so the set fitted well into the festival theme and was a fitting conclusion to it.
L’Atlantique Jazz Festival is a nicely relaxed festival that takes place in a number of venues, notably the atmospheric Le Vauban, a jazz club that has been active since the early 1950s. It has a supportive audience that comes out in good numbers. Brest itself is an attractive city with a fine and compact city centre and a large port area that one can walk around.
With special thanks to Janick Tilly.