Paris Journal 2009 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com
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It’s been a
jazzy weekend so far. On the way home
from a fine dinner at Le Caveau du Palais on the Place Dauphine last night,
we stopped in the Café Laurent at the Hotel Aubusson to hear Christian
Brenner and his fellow musicians once more.
It was a delightful evening. We
had our same two seats in the front corner of the bar, so from that elevated
position we could see almost everything.
A special guest saxophonist was playing, and the sound was very
cool. We stayed for the first two
sets, then wandered home just before midnight. Today has been
a flurry of cleaning and packing activity, the with goal of having it under
control enough by 3PM so that we could go to hear Sidney Bechet Memory, a
jazz sextet that specializes in, you guessed it, the music of Sidney Bechet. Sidney was one of those jazz musicians who
moved to Paris and spent the end of his life there. But don’t think for a minute that the
French always treated him well. Once
when in Paris, he was arrested and jailed in an incident in which a female
passerby was injured during a shootout.
After serving time in jail, he was deported. Somehow, years later, the French allowed
him back into the country (1951) and he married a woman in Antibes. He died in Paris in 1959. The concert was
free. It took place in the grand
ballroom of the town hall for the 6th arrondissement, just a block
away from us on the Place Saint Sulpice.
The drummer,
Poumy Arnaud, was particularly talented.
We heard the group play New JB, Wild Cat Blues, Mood Indigo, Buddy
Bolden Stomp, Blackstick, Muskrat Ramble, Marchand de Poisson, Petite Fleur,
Dans les rues d’Antibes, and Royal Garden Blues. After the
fiasco of trying to buy our RER tickets last time (when we went to Germany),
we bought them yesterday at the Luxembourg station. It is a good thing we did, because
evidently the regular ticket window in the station is closed for
construction, and a temporary “bureau de vente” had been set up out on the
sidewalk. I doubt this would have been
staffed on a a Sunday morning. We
picked up a train schedule, too, so tomorrow, all we need to do is walk ourselves
and our two briefcases and my purse to the station, catch the train, then
catch the plane. Only one plane, too,
because we’re flying directly to Miami and then renting a Toyota Prius from
there to get home to Sanibel. That’s about as
simple as we can make it. Au revoir Paris.
A la prochaine. Sign
my guestbook. View
my guestbook.
Val de Grace
military hospital – the entrance near the chapel. |
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Statue
in the Luxembourg Gardens.
The
Luxembourg Gardens. Note the palm
trees.
Kids
on ponies in the Luxembourg Gardens.
Weary people in
the Luxembourg Gardens. |
