FRANCE: DIANA KRALL AND ABDULLAH IBRAHIM ARE AMONG THE HIGHLIGHTS OF THE MARCIAC JAZZ FESTIVAL

Record ID: 391818

  • Title: FRANCE: DIANA KRALL AND ABDULLAH IBRAHIM ARE AMONG THE HIGHLIGHTS OF THE MARCIAC JAZZ FESTIVAL
  • Date: 12th August 2001
  • Summary: CUS NEWSPAPER ARTICLES ON DIANA KRALL
  • Embargoed: 27th August 2001 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: MARCIAC, FRANCE
  • Country: France
  • Topics: Entertainment,General
  • Reuters ID: LVA585XBOC8XL8798Q68PKR2QX3L
  • Story Text: Diana Krall, the Queen of Jazz, and Abdullah Ibrahim, the High Priest of South African music, were among the highlights of the Marciac Jazz Festival.
    The Marciac Jazz Festival, which takes place in a tiny medieval village in the deep heart of France, is one of the most acclaimed jazz events in the world. Every year, thousands of jazz lovers from all every continent flock to Marciac to listen to the performances of some of the world's finest jazz performers.
    This year, for the 23rd edition of the Festival, Diana Krall and Abdullah Ibrahim were among the hottest artists on the menu.
    With a Grammy on her mantelpiece and an album that's shifted two million copies, Diana Krall is the undisputed new Queen of Jazz. She is one of those rare jazz artists who's managed to crossover to the mainstream, breaking into the Billboard Hot 100 and performing to tens of thousands of screaming fans in some of the world's most famous arenas.
    With her sultry voice and blonde bombshell looks, Krall is every record executive's dream, but she refuses to be considered a marketing product. "I'm very lucky, but I don't take it for granted", she told Reuters Television in Marciac.
    Krall's aesthetic is directly derived from pre-1965 jazz. She sings mostly love songs that fall between jazz and pop, and her playing can be described as bebop, a genre which dates back to the late 1930s. While she is revered by her fans around the world, some of her critics find her art is still lacking in passion. "She has grace and elegance but I find her a bit asceptic," commented Andre Francis, a former radio critic who is a well-known presence at the Marciac Festival.
    Also acclaimed by the crowds, South Africa's priest of Jazz, Abdullah Ibrahim worked his magic at Marciac accompanied by the Hamburg-based NDR Big Band, one of the finest big bands in the world today and whose past projects have included composers as diverse as Duke Ellington and Weill.
    Ibrahim's serenely soul-stirring compositions, with their robust, repetitive vamps, yearning refrains and long, snaking top lines have long reflected the twin influences of the pianist's South African homeland and his many experiences in the wide world of jazz.
    Ibrahim was driven from South Africa by the atrocities of apartheid in the 1960. At that time, he was known by his pre-Muslim name Dollar Brand. He adopted Islam in 1968 and since them devoted his work to world-wide peace and reconciliation. He campaigned vociferously for his country's freedom as an artist and ANC member for 30 years. It is as an eloquent jazz pianist, however, that Ibrahim is best known, bridging the sounds of the township dance halls and shebeens and the jazz of Duke Ellington and Thelonius Monk.
    As a composer, Ibrahim has written some of the most vividly beautiful themes to emerge from his culture's special chemistry of African vocalised phrasing, Cape Town multi-ethnicity, European church music and jazz. His music is a wide and slowly winding river evoking the reveries, passions, reminiscences, jubilations and frustrations of South African life, some of it reflecting the pain of the yoke, most of it gloriously soaring beyond.
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