The jazzman and his only spectator, face to face in a Parisian cellar, five meters away. A few words and the sound of the saxophone gushes out, crystal clear, like a release after several months without live music due to coronavirus. Since June 2, the Parisian jazz hall La Gare, in the north-east of Paris, has organized each night a hundred "solo concerts for solo spectators", lasting about five minutes, "between an artist suffering from not give for two months, and a spectator withering not to receive for two months, "according to Julien De Casabianca, co-founder of the place in 2017.
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You must first register, then wait, until the names on the list are scattered one by one. Finally, the time is coming. The door closes towards the unknown, for a meeting, a face-to-face meeting of a few minutes with the musician. The room, like a long crypt with multiple arches, is bathed in darkness. Moisture spots pearl the soil surface. At the end, two lamps, a Persian carpet and two bouquets of white flowers give the decor a subdued and intimate atmosphere.
"Hi what's you'r name?" asks the evening artist. Games of shadow and light take shape on his skin. Sitting on a chair a few meters away from him, distancing measures oblige, the spectator introduces himself and the "solo concert" can begin.
"Total freedom"
With each new concert, a new meeting. Spectators smile, eyes amazed. Others watch carefully, the concentrated air. Still others turn their heads towards their spouse, because two lovers, two friends, two members of the same family, form "one entity" and can attend the concert together.
“I feel that people are really coming to indulge, their hearts wide open. In this kind of configuration, there is no longer any separation between you and the public, ” says AFP saxophonist Benoit Crauste, one of the two musicians playing on Wednesday evening at La Gare. "When you play alone, you are much freer. I go where I want. There, it is total freedom, I feel it ” , he describes. With his employment contract in hand, he relishes his return to the stage after having had to pause his activity during the epidemic. "Replaying, for me, is a liberation," said the other evening musician, saxophonist Gaël Horellou. "Depending on people's mood, it makes me want to play different things . "
"To replay, for me, it is a liberation" , for the saxophonist Gaël Horellou Thomas COEX / AFP
At the exit, the spectators are under the spell. On the large terrace of the old disused station of the small belt, an old railway line that went around Paris, they catch their breath, beer in hand. "He looked at us and I think what he played was right for us. It's like a chef in the kitchen who makes you a dish just for you, ” says Alizée Jarycki, 30, who came with her companion. Thomas Gien immediately leaves his mini-concert over, his eyes still bright with emotion: "I'm going to be able to sleep with stars in my eyes" .
A "memory for life"
For the two co-managers of the space, there is no question of organizing more usual concerts with rules of distance between spectators. “With 50 people in a large concert hall, you leave with the idea of a concert missed in the head. A solo concert, you leave with a memory for life, ” explains Yacine Abdeltif.
"In economic terms, for now, it's catastrophic," admits his partner Julien De Casabianca, who estimates that revenues are four to ten times less than normal. On the other hand, he is delighted with the artistic result. "There is a radicality in the fact of saying that one will not resume the concerts other than in the intensity of the communion" , he assures.
At the rate of a hundred solo microconcerts per evening from 9 p.m., La Gare announces 3,000 performances for the month of June.
