Michel Godard (FR) in an interview at ZomerJazzFietsTour (ZJFT) 2018, August 25th. Location of this interview: Garnwerd, Headquarter of the ZJFT.
With many thanks to Michel Godard, Marcel Roelofs, everyone at ZJFT, especially the nice people at the Headquarter and my team on tour: Maria Palomeque and Siebelt Süßmilch.
During the ZomerJazzFietsTour (ZJFT) (SummerJazzCyclingTour) 2018 I had the very special chance to interview some really fascinating musicians. This very unique festival, located in the northern country side of Groningen/The Netherlands, has developed into one of the treasures of the Dutch Jazz Festival landscape. The festival’s music is programmed by Marcel Roelofs, a legend, whose signature of musical taste is fabulously here.
On this festival the visitors are invited to pick their cycling routes in the beautiful Reitdiep valley and at least try to grab some of 29 concerts in medieval churches and farmer’s barns, with music featuring the latest trends in jazz and improvised music from The Netherlands and abroad.
In the past years I already had the big pleasure to interview artists like: Joe McPhee, Lucien Dubuis and Regula Schwab. This year the tuba players Oren Marshall and Michel Godard, the multi instrumentalist Eugene Chadbourne and baritone saxophone player, composer and educator Giuseppe Doronzo.
Very special for me was to meet the tuba-duo with Oren Marshall (UK) and Michel Godard (FR). All happened in the Headquarter Garnwerd of the ZomerJazzFietsTour, where many of the musicians of this festival met for refreshment and socializing between their performances. After my interviews with Giuseppe Doronzo (IT) and Eugene Chadbourne (US), I got postive feedback on my further interview requests from Michel Godard and Oren Marshall. After their last concert, which took place in the small church of the village Ezinge, we met for our talks in the evening, really relaxed while the festival already ended slowly. I was very happy to get both of them, they were very positive, charming, talkative and interested.
Wikipedia describes Michel Godard this way: “Michel Godard (3 October 1960, Héricourt, near Belfort, France) is a French avant-garde jazz and classical musician. He plays tuba and the predecessor of the tuba, a brass instrument known as the serpent.
At 18, Godard was a member of the Philharmonic Orchestra of Radio-France. He has also been member of the French National Jazz Orchestra and the Arban Chamber Brass quintet, and has played with the Ensemble Musique Vivante, the ancient music Ensemble La Venice and “XVIII-21Musique de Lumieres”.
Godard has participated in projects with Michel Portal, Louis Sclavis, Enrico Rava, Michael Riessler, Horace Tapscott, Christof Lauer, Kenny Wheeler, Ray Anderson, Rabih Abou-Khalil, Sylvie Courvoisier, Simon Nabatov, Linda Sharrock, Pierre Favre, Misha Mengelberg, Gianluigi Trovesi, Willem Breuker, Gabriele Mirabassi, the ARTE Quartett and more recently in a quartet with co-tubist Dave Bargeron.
His album Three Seasons (HGBS, 2014) with Günter “Baby” Sommer and Patrick Bebelaar) was awarded Album of the Year 2014 by The New York City Jazz Record. The album Stupor Mundi (DML, 2015) with Patrick Bebelaar, Vincent Klink, Gavino Murgia and Carlo Rizzo was awarded the German Record Critics’ Award.
Godard has also played and recorded with the pipeband of the Brittany town Quimper, with reggae star Alpha Blondy, and with Canterbury rock musicians John Greaves and Pip Pyle.
As a composer, he has been commissioned by Radio France, Donaueschingen Music Festival, and the French Ministry of Cultural Affairs.”
