Moriarty on tour: Sorel-Tracy, Festival de la Gibelotte 05.07.2014 Smalltown, former industrial harbour, slightly decayed. A cargo ship seems to be parked in the middle of the houses, her rusty hull dwarfing all other buildings in town. A sturdy female sheriff in mirrored ray-bans welcomes us into town: the center – basically, three streets whose perspectives are blocked by concrete silos...
Moriarty on tour: Théâtre Maisonneuve. Montreal Jazz Festival, 4th of July, 2014. At last we get to see the inside of that giant brutalist concrete monster: le Théâtre Maisonneuve, built in 1967 by the architects David, Barott & Boulva, looming over the Place des Arts like an artificial cantilevered mountain. No magic inside, but big simple efficient functionalism. Huge foyers and public...
Moriarty on tour: Place de la Cité, Sherbrooke QC July 3rd, 2014. On the road to the east. Sherbrooke in the summer, students are gone, the streets look slightly deserted but for the drifters and oddballs at the crossroads. It’s our fourth concert here. We perform on the Place de la Cité, a great empty square surrounded by stone and concrete buildings, flanked by the tribunal. It’s...
Moriarty on tour, Paris-Montreal 01.07.2014
Dancing at the back of the airplane while cruising over the Atlantic. Back to Montreal, a few months after our winter tour: heat and sweat. Throngs of people walking up and down Rue Sainte-Catherine for the Jazz Festival. In the night, a concert of Burning Spear at the Metropolis.
Moriarty on tour: « Fugitives » with Don Cavalli & Wayne Standley, Café de la Danse, Paris, June 9th 2014. Landing in the familiar Bastille area, straight after a few days of touring the festivals. The great stone wall is still there, looming over us. We rehearse « Down In The Willow Garden » with Don Cavalli, and « Oklahoma Hills » with Wayne. The venue is sold-out, about three hundred...
Festival Son du Vignoble, Marigny-Brizay 08.06.2014. Leaving the highway, driving deep into the countryside north of Poitiers. Habitations troglodytes. Vineyards. Summer heat. Donkeys and geese. Wealthy farmhouse with wine cellars carved deep into the tuffstone ground. Tonight we play under a corrugated roof, a wine storage hangar. Reminds us of a festival in Vihiers, Anjou, years ago. The...
Le Bal Poussière, touring with Christine Salem and ger percussionists: Périgny, near La Rochelle. Blazing sunlight. Rona Hartner walking around with her daughter, father and puppy. A small stage in a park. The young festival is run by Yasmine & Pascal who setup the acoustic concert on the Musée d’Histoire Naturelle de la Rochelle a few years ago. Backstage we meet Minino Garai’s...
Moriarty with Christine Salem, « Le Bal Poussière » on tour: Festival Ingrédients, Ingré, June 6th 2014.
Somewhere near Orléans: wide meadow, towering trees, stray dog, construction site. Heat. While we set up and soundcheck, Jaquee sings on the other stage. Strange reminiscence of a festival in Australia.
Moriarty with Christine Salem: La Clef, St-Germain-en-Laye (F) 05.06.2014 Four days with Christine & les tontons Harry & David, singing songs together and spicing the food with piment-kombava. We play our songs written on the Reunion Island, like « Sakalav », « Lespwar », « Mikonepa ». New Moriarty songs too, like « Diamonds never die », boosted with new percussion beats. Lespwar Yelo...
Moriarty on tour: Théâtre Granada, Sherbrooke (Québec) 21.02.2014 Back on Sherbrooke’s main street at the beloved Théâtre Granada, its 1930s Broadway flair and somewhat weathered past glory. Slush and narrow brick side alleys, candles lighting up the tables in a cabaret manner, intimate crowd underneath the grand italian-esque decorum of the music-hall. Spanish revival style, said the...