THE BRIDGE a transatlantic network for jazz and creative music

« A life without bridges, no stories to tell. » David Sylvian VISIONS

If the 1001 musics of the jazz field were the first “world musics”, would it not be because they allowed multiple worlds to express and signify themselves, always passionately, always singularly? Through a musical art dedicated to individual invention and collective reinvention, to the most astonishing connections and sharings. In recent years, after a century of stories and legends during which each improviser, each group, each scene has grown more specific, many French and North American musicians have shown a renewed desire to confront the musical and sociomusical realities of their counterparts on the other side of the Atlantic. To develop true mutual knowledge, in interpersonal and cross-cultural relationships that can develop over the long term, beyond a creation, a concert or a record.

The Bridge forms a network of exchanges, production and dissemination, recreating the conditions for this perennial sharing: a transatlantic bridge that French and North American musicians regularly cross, in both directions and in the context of cooperative projects.

This bridge between the worlds of music develops an alternative mode of circulation, thanks to tours designed as ethnographic journeys, where one explores a territory (in France or in Chicago and the Midwest) rather than travels relentlessly and thoughtlessly. Journeys in which each musician is given the time and space to resonate with the environment in which his partners evolve. On site and in context, The Bridge collaborates with all kinds of structures. This alternative model of cooperation, inspired by what has always made jazz an art of encounters and relationships – what is now called “in-person” – brings together clubs and festivals, grassroot organizations and cultural centers, music schools and universities on both continents, in a network where human adventures are woven and woven that exceed all expectations. THE RULES OF THE GAME

The Bridge associates nearly 150 French and North American musicians (75 per cycle, one cycle lasting seven years), divided into quartets and quintets. This long list respects the sociological diversity of the jazz field: men and women of all generations and backgrounds, who will be brought together, one after another, configuration after configuration. And its aesthetic diversity: music as a means of expression and as a means of experimentation, music as a domain of possibility. All of them show invaluable capacities to share their knowledge and craft, both on- and off-stage

Each year, The Bridge organizes 4 tours or journeys – 2 to France and 2 to the United States – of rigorously cooperative formations, bringing together French and North American musicians who are members of the network, who have chosen each other and who have formulated their own project. Those who start in France will continue in the United States, and vice versa.

In the direction of France to the United States, these journeys take the shape of 2-3 week stays in Chicago and the Midwest. Such a length of time opens up a wide range of activities and experiences, all sorts of twists and turns, to “infiltrate” the visiting French musicians in a novel way–to truly immerse them in a socio-musical environment through practice.

In the direction of the United States to France, these trips are more akin to tours that rely on the network of partner clubs and festivals. However, the North American musicians are given the opportunity to make a few “getaways” with other members of the network and all kinds of audiences and communities.

From person to person, from group to group, by rotation, The Bridge reinforces the links between fraternities and sororities of musicians with distinct but complementary practices; The Bridge opens groundbreaking lines of communication and sharing. FIRST CYCLE: 2013-2021

For the 8 years of its first cycle of activities, The Bridge organized 38 tours, totalling 120 events per year on both sides of the Atlantic (concerts, performances, artistic and cultural outreach activities, record releases).

Twins : Fred Jackson Jr, Stéphane Payen, Edward Perraud, & Makaya McCraven. Sonic Communion : Douglas R. Ewart, Jean-Luc Cappozzo, Joëlle Léandre, Bernard Santacruz & Michael Zerang. The Spirit of Rasan Adabravi : Aymeric Avice, Jason Adasiewicz, Joshua Abrams, Benjamin Sanz & Avreeayl Ra. The Turbine! : Harrison Bankhead, Benjamin Duboc, Hamid Drake & Ramon Lopez. Shore to Shore : Rob Mazurek, Mwata Bowden, Julien Desprez, Matt Lux & Mathieu Sourisseau. The Sync : Sylvaine Hélary, Eve Risser, Fred Lonberg-Holm & Mike Reed. Escape Lane : Ben Lamar Gay, Marquis Hill, Jeff Parker, Joachim Florent & Denis Fournier + Ari Brown. Vent Fort : Khari B., Magic Malik, , Guillaume Orti, Fred BBriet & Tyshawn Sorey. Fantastic Four : Antonin-Tri Hoang, Mars Williams, Ernest Khabeer Dawkins, Tatsu Aoki & Samuel Silvant. Transatlantic Amazon Gods : Mankwe Ndosi, Mike Ladd, Sylvain Kassap & Dana Hall. Antichamber Music : Claudia Solal, Katherine Young, , Benoît Delbecq & Lou Mallozzi. A Pride of Lions : Joe McPhee, Daunik Lazro, Joshua Abrams, Guillaume Séguron & Chad Taylor. Sea Angels : Lisa E. Harris, Nicole Mitchell, David Boykin, Christian Pruvost, Christophe Rocher & Lionel Garcin. Forget to Find : Pierre-Antoine Badaroux, Jean-Luc Guionnet, Jim Baker & Jason Roebke. Sangliers : Keefe Jackson, Dave Rempis, Christine Wodrascka, Didier Lasserre & Peter Orins. The Way Through : Josh Berman, Jason Stein, Didier Petit & Edward Perraud. SECOND CYCLE: 2019-2026

In 2019, following the success of a model that proved its relevance and effectiveness, and thanks to the renewed support of all its partners, The Bridge launched a second cycle of activities with 70 new French and North-American musicians, mostly from the younger generations, divided into 16 ensembles. The invited musicians were carefully selected to ensure there be true representation and diversity.

The Bridge #2.1 : Rob Frye, JayVe Montgomery, Simon Sieger, Olivia Scemama, Dan Bitney + Christiane Bopp. The Bridge #2.2 : Mai Sugimoto, Raymond Boni, Anton Hatwich & Paul Rogers. The Bridge #2.3 : Marvin Tate, Erwan Keravec, Gerrit Hatcher, Lia Kohl & Gaspar Claus. The Bridge #2.4 : Damon Locks, Morgane Carnet, Macie Stewart, Jozef Dumoulin & Fanny Lasfargues. The Bridge #2.5 : Ben Lamar Gay, Sam Pluta, Sophie Agnel & Pascal Niggenkemper. The Bridge#2.6 : Quentin Biardeau, Corey Wilkes, Justin Dillard & Etienne Ziemniak. The Bridge #2.7 : Isaiah Collier, Jaimie Branch, Rafaëlle Rinaudo, Gilles Coronado & Tim Daisy. The Bridge #2.8 : Rajiv Halim, Florian Nastorg, Yoram Rosilio & Mikel Patrick Avery. The Bridge #2.9 : Sakina Abdou, Julien Pontvianne, Ugochi Nwaogwugwu, Julien Chamla & Coco Elysses. The Bridge #2.10 : Nick Mazzarella, Tim Stine, Céline Rivoal, Katie Ernst & Sylvain Lemêtre. The Bridge #2.11 : Jean-Brice Godet, Greg Ward, Hélène Labarrière & Isaiah Spencer. The Bridge #2.12 : Magic Malik, Angel Bat Dawid, Richard Comte, Nick Macri & Toma Gouband. The Bridge #2.13 : Jeff Albert, Irvin Pierce, Paul Wacrenier, Chrisian Dillingham & Nicolas Pointard. The Bridge #2.14 : Tim Haldeman, Fidel Fourneyron, Antonin Rayon, Thibault Cellier & Marcus Evans. The Bridge #2.15 : Bertrand Denzler, Basile Naudet, Junius Paul, Vincent Davis & Will Guthrie. The Bridge #2.16 : Peter Maunu, Simon Henocq, Erik M., Luca Ventimiglia & Julian Kirshner. THE NETWORK

The Bridge’s driving principle is to work in collaboration with the production and performance structures that work year-round in a given territory, in France and the United States. This chain of association of some forty venues on both sides of the ocean allows each tour to be organized in a logic of reciprocity and mutuality.

Along the same lines, The Bridge defends a model in which long-distance travel is only justified for transatlantic trips and for tours of two to three weeks devoid of plane-hopping, thus developing responsible practices based on sustainable territorial ties.

By fostering the interpenetration of these two “ecosystems”, bringing musicians (but also programmers and promoters from both continents) together, The Bridge has directly or indirectly sparked many new projects outside its immediate perimeter: in 2015, “Chicago in Paris,” in collaboration with the Théâtre de la Ville, the Théâtre du Châtelet, and the Festival d’Automne; in 2018, Olivier Benoit’s Orchestre National de Jazz playing Mike Reed’s “The City Was Yellow”; in 2019, its own exceptional festival at the Espace Cardin-Théâtre de la Ville and La Dynamo, and the international colloquium “W. E.B. Du Bois, Scholar, Activist and Passeur between America, Europe and Africa”, with the University of Chicago in Paris, the Musée d’Aquitaine in Bordeaux and several institutions.

The Bridge also shares its network and practical experience in North America with jazz and improvised music club and festival curators in France, and vice-versa, as well as with musicians and their promoters who want to understand and reach markets with different legal, administrative and fiscal quirks.

More than a network of musicians, The Bridge is also, therefore, a network of actors and structures supporting the same differentialist aesthetics–producing events, information and knowledge, around these musical and sociomusical practices. IN FRANCE IN CHICAGO OUTREACH & ARCHIVES

By its nature, its project and its activities, The Bridge is particularly sensitive to issues related to social and cultural democracy. Outreach activities, workshops and residencies are constantly developed in order to allow the meeting between the audience and the artists, and unfettered access to all kinds of musical expression through individual and collective improvisation. These activities are aimed at all audiences, initiated or not to musical practices. The Bridge also takes care to highlight and put into perspective the concerts, for the benefit of the host structures, their audiences and their partners: presentations and discussions around the projects, multidisciplinary extensions with the musicians, etc.

Each project is therefore adaptable, each intervention designed and set up in close collaboration with the host structures, in order to adapt it to the profiles and expectations. The Bridge team is always able to provide the necessary documentation for the preparation of these moments, or to commission historians, anthropologists, musicologists to contextualize the activities to come, to look back on the activities carried out. The purpose of these educational activities that we propose is to regularly involve the musicians in schools, associations, media libraries, cultural places and social centers on the way of the groups on tour, to seize all the opportunities offered by the presence and availability of the musicians from both continents. To set forth and return to the adventure.

By archiving most of the events produced (interviews, reports, audio and/or video recordings of concerts, workshops, conferences, etc. By archiving most of the events produced (interviews, reports, audio and/or video recordings of concerts, workshops, conferences, etc.), in order to provide, in the long term, an irreplaceable documentation for jazz and improvised music lovers, professionals in the sector, music students and researchers working in these fields, The Bridge also ensures the preservation of the traces left by these musics and these moments which, although ephemeral, nevertheless hold fabulous teachings on the field of contemporary music, on the role of art and artists as well as on the role of cultural and cross-cultural exchanges in society. THE BRIDGE SESSIONS

The Bridge Sessions label puts strange objects in circulation, called discs, that document each French- American ensemble crossing the bridge and the ocean. Each record, recorded during the first tour, is produced to accompany the second, on the other side of the Atlantic, and illustrated by a contemporary artist.

We do not forget that, for a few millennia or so, music did not need to be recorded, to be broadcast other than when men and women took hold of their instruments, were taken hold of by them. Everything starts from the performance and returns to it. All it took was a new technology and its production chain to go from producing half a million records a year to nearly a hundred million in just a few years after the First World War. We know the story, from the first firms to the majors and the mergers, until the collapse, while the independent labels took more and more the appearance of underground labels. From being a luxury item, the record, in one form or another, has become an everyday consumer good, a commodity, a relic. Because the www and streaming arrived, a new technology replaced a new technology.

We do not consider however that the collapse of the exchange value of the disc-object takes with it the use value of the disc-object. Nor do we neglect the tactile happiness, which is not limited to the daily touching of the endless surface of the screens, nor the highly revealing fact that “disc” is the only word to designate realities in anatomy as well as in astronomy, geometry, clock-making, computer science and railway signalling.

In all these respects, The Bridge Sessions, which benefits from the distribution network of its RogueArt label partners, does not abandon the perilous but oh-so-fulfilling exercise of discus throwing. Contact & website [email protected] acrossthebridges.org

The Bridge Sessions Label thebridgesessions.bandcamp.com

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