Let the summer commence!

Snow in Ickenham - England

The Burgundian winter of 2018 will not enter the history books as one of the coldest winters ever. On the contrary; our winter this year was a real sluggish winter. Even though we had a few days with temperatures not far above the freezing point, a strong wind coming from the north combined with a high air humidity made us feeling cold to the bone.

Snow in the harbour of Den Bosch (the Netherlands)

I prefer one of these sunny bone-dry days, no wind, and temperatures well below zero. That feels a lot better, but we have hardly seen any days like that. Snow was also not very visible in Burgundy. The advantage of the lack of snow and real cold weather is that we had no black ice on the roads, nor slippery roads due to well compacted snow, and as a result we also had no problem with the mud-like layer of half-melted snow that can stay on the roads for quite a while after it started thawing.

Cité de la Musique - Paris

The only substantial snow we have seen we experienced during a short holiday in England just before Christmas, during a short visit to the Netherlands and while we had a short holiday in Paris, both in March. Here we had some sleet, but that did not produce a nice white blanket on the fields.

Sleet - Chazelle

As the summer is supposed to break out any day now, we sincerely hope that we will soon have a long period of dry, sunny and hence warm weather; that would at least make us forget the sluggish winter we have had.

Chapaize Culture

Chapaize

Actually, this is advertising for the "enemy", however, the understanding between the organisers of the various musical festivals here is such that we do not really try to catch each other's clientele.
Chapaize Culture has this year again an interesting program, reason why I decided to take a pick from this year's (2018) offer:

Saturday 14 April 18h30 - Auberge rurale, Chapaize: Soirée crêpes / accordéon (€5 for the concert, crêpes and drinks are charged separately). Two accordion players and two guitarists.

Roundelay (Chapaize)

Thursday 10 May 17h00 (ascencion day) – Eglise St-Martin, Chapaize - Roundelay, Dutch madrigal choir (free of charge, at the end they will go around with a hat). The ascencion day concert of Roundelay is a yearly event. We are still very impressed with this choir. We have attended their concerts since 2010, if not longer. The church has wonderful acoustics for this sort of music.

Sunday 27 May 17h00 – Auberge rurale, Chapaize – La Sido Trio (€12), with a program of Chansons written by o.a. Ferré, Prévert and Weil. Jazz trio with female singer.

Saturday 2 June 19h00 – Eglise St-Martin, Chapaize – Choeur arpège de Trélex (free of charge, at the end they will go around with a hat). Mixed choir of approx. 30 people, music from renaissance to contemporary music.

Friday 8 June 19h00 – Eglise St-Martin, Chapaize – Chorale Lycée Bismarck de Karlsruhe (free of charge, at the end they will go around with a hat). Music from classical to jazz and film music.

Ensemble ODO (Cluny)

Saturday 16 June 20h30 - Eglise St-Martin, Chapaize – ODO ensemble (€15). A group best described as bringing World Music. I saw them last year in Cluny and I was well impressed.

Sunday 5 August 18h30 - Eglise St-Martin, Chapaize – Irish music (€12). Flute, vocal, piano, accordeon.

Lancharre

Saturday 1 September – Prieuré de Lancharre (free of charge, at the end they will go around with a hat). The official opening of the renovated church with various events, such as:
16h00 – Trio with bagpipes and hurdy-gurdy.
18h00 – Roundelay (see also 10 May)

Saturday 8 September 20h30 - Eglise St-Martin, Chapaize – Paris Gadjo Club (€25). A quintet with manouche (à la Django Reinhardt) and Brasilian jazz.

Paris Gadjo Club (Paris)

Click here for the complete agenda.