Thomas de Pourquery revisits the free jazz of Sun Ra

Thomas de Pourquery offered the audience a very compact concert on Saturday evening, closing out Jazz au Parvis week. Compact in length, barely an hour and a half including the encore, but also compact in the concert's sustained intensity. By presenting a program dedicated to Sun Ra, he resolutely took us into the realm of free jazz. Sun Ra left Tarbes with the memory of a genius of free jazz improvisation, shrouded in a hallucinatory mystique for those lucky enough to have been under the big top in Place Marcadieu in the early 1980s. A jazz figure who left his mark on free jazz before being forgotten by the public, and even by musicians who didn't keep his repertoire alive. At least, not until Thomas de Pourquery & Supersonic released "Play Sun Ra," an album voted best album of the year at the 2014 Victoires du Jazz awards and a finalist for the French Record Prize from the French Jazz Academy. A free jazz legacy that Thomas de Pourquery and his saxophone shared with us in a completely unrestrained concert as a sextet, featuring such free and brilliant minds as Edward Perraux on drums and Fabrice Martinez on trumpet and cornet. The concert captivated the audience at Le Parvis with its rich and varied offerings, the genuine freedom of interpretation, and the overall musical quality of the ensemble. A nod was also given to the Pau-based jazzman André Minvielle, who was also in attendance.