We were talking last night with a friend here in Tübingen how the fall festival season is now in full swing here in Tüinbgen, what with food, music, and film festivals happening almost every other weekend from September into December.
We were on our way back from attending a free concert that was part of the Jazz Festival, an annual 9-day series of performances by jazz musicians in venues all over the city. Last night we went to hear a group called Trio Bluesette. Here’s a link to a few video clips on their website. They play a variety of folk dance music from different countries, including Italy, Hungary, Brazil and France. Quite fun. The odd thing I just discovered, though, is that despite their name (which is also the URL of their website), apparently they are usually the a quartet, as all the photos and clips show 4 musicians. However, last night they were just a trio, with the guy shown in the photos (on the website) playing the guitar occasionally switching instruments to play the accordion on some songs.
The fun thing about the Jazz Festival is that there are all kinds of little groups playing concerts like that all week, and a lot of the concerts are free, as there are sponsors that underwrite the costs of some shows.
Last Saturday was the first day of the festival, and there were open air concerts throughout the day scattered on the streets of Tübingen. Now, there are often street musicians around during the day here in Tübingen, similar to the ones that provided what I called the “soundtrack of my life” experience back in Bolzano. A couple of weeks ago I had an odd, rather surreal experience. While walking into a German bookshop in Tübingen I started hearing the strains of a street musician playing New York, New York on the accordion. You don’t hear that too often. Well, except here in Tübingen.
That same guy does a really excellent rendition of the song The Bare Necessities, from the Disney film, The Jungle Book, BTW. Often he’ll play it while standing outside the entrance to the grocery store. I find that somehow fitting.
But I digress.
Last Saturday there were jazz groups set up and playing regular concert-style sets on the streets, like the group in the photo below:
Jazz group playing on the streets of Tübingen
We saw this same group last year, in the same spot. What’s interesting is that people are just walking by (note the woman and child behind the pianist), or riding by on a bike or in a car. A bunch of my other photos I took that day have the group hidden by a passing car, in fact. But, on a sunny day, it was a fun atmosphere to walk around and hear all the music. We could even hear it in our apartment when we opened the windows just in time to hear a New Orleans style band going by.
Last year we unfortunately managed to miss most of the festival, even though we were here in town. We just weren’t that tuned in to all the possibilities at the time, I guess, but this year we’ve bought tickets to a couple of concerts over the weekend. If we hear any more good groups I’ll post some links next week.
The one group we did hear last year played some Django Reinhardt style “Hot Club of France” music. Oddly, a line from a modern song about that type of music, Le Jazz Hot, kept running through my brain today as I looked through the festival catalog. You see, the festival is technically called the Tübinger Jazz & Klassik Tage — “Tübingen’s Jazz and Classical Music Days”. Everybody in town, though, as in the song, just refers to it as “jazz.”
OK, so that’s a bit of a stretch as a way to end this post, but sometimes you wind up stuck for an ending. 😉 Anyway, below are links to all the music referenced in this post. Hope you can use them to create a little virtual music fest of your own – whether or not you decide to call it, “jazz.” 😉
See you Monday. 😉
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Links to songs:
- Trio Blusette website
- Bare Necessities, (clip from The Jungle Book)
- New York, New York (clip sung by Liza Minnelli
- Django Reinhardt music on Youtube – link pulls up a search for his name on YouTube
- Le Jazz Hot, (clip from Victor/Victoria)