Antibes and Cannes Jazz Festivals were quite renowned in their day, that is the ’60s and ’70s. Now, legendary jazz musician and producer Quincy Jones is making available, for the first time, a slew of archive performances from the two jazz events.
Through his QwestTV, Jones is releasing 66 rare performances not only from the two festivals but also from three other French venues – the Salle Pleyel in Paris, as well as intimate footage filmed at the Club Saint-Germain and the Blue Note club in Paris. All of the performances will be online for free.
The collection includes films from Ella Fitzgerald, Thelonious Monk Quartet, Miles Davis Quintet, and Nina Simone, described by The New Yorker as “perhaps the most significant treasure chest of archival jazz concerts to emerge in years.”
Jones’ ‘French Connection’ stems from the fact that “the young Quincy Jones moved to France in 1957 keen to take advantage of a more welcoming and open-minded environment. It was this move which arguably contributed to Quincy Jones’s development as a classical-trained jazz composer studying with renowned French composition teacher Nadia Boulanger, and started his legendary career.”
Jones recently said that back in the 1950s, the “easiest way to starve in America was to be a black arranger writing for strings,” “You could be Mozart, Wagner, Beethoven all rolled into one. But if you were black, your ass went to the blues and jazz department of every record company.”
You can find the list of available performances here.
