Marciac France

New date added!

Kid Creole and the Coconuts will be headlining at Jazz in Marciac festival on August 11th in Gers, South West France.

Click here for more information and for tickets: Jazz in Marciac

Tickets start at €20 and go up to €70. The band will be gracing the stage for a full live show at 23.00.

The lineup: 
August Darnell - the Kid
Sarah McGrath - Coconut
Roos Van 'Awesome' Rossum - Coconut
Charlotte De Graaf - Coconut
Barnaby Dickinson - trombone
George Hogg - trumpet
Tim Vine - keyboards
Jamie McCredie - guitar
Oroh Angiama - bass
Dave Imby - drums

Unclassifiable, this is how we can talk about the kind of music of Kid Creole & the Coconuts. The composition of this group of the 80s has changed dramatically over the years, we will mainly remember its leader August Darnell. Thomas August Darnell Browder, or simply August Darnell was born inthe Bronx where he grew up, New York bathing in the multiplicity of cultures and getting acquainted with many kinds of music. At the end of the 70s, Andy Hernandez and August Darnell together set up the group Kid Creole and the Coconuts accompanied by many musicians. The group is not long to  talk about it with the release of their first single "Maladie d'amour" in 1980. The first album,  "Off the coast of me" arrives the same year with thirteen titles. A year later, they return with  "Fresh fruit in foreign places" a kind of musical travel diary with twelve titles. Follows then   "Tropical gangsters" who arrives at the 3rd place of the UK Albums Chart. In 1983, Kid Creole &   the Coconuts released "Doppelganger" with titles such as "The lifeboat party" or "Broadway rhythm". With Kid Creole And The Coconuts, the cocktail of soul-calypso-rock and self-deprecating rhythmsfinds its happiest expression, with the luscious presence of the delightful Coconuts.

40 summers young this summer

What are forty birthday candles compared with the fireworks that light up Marciac every summer? If you drew the equation with the true length of the festival over four decades of thrills, then you would have 600 nights at the least, plus as many days of jubilation and, for good measure, almost 6,000 raised curtains, enough to wear out more than one national theatre… By way of a ruby anniversary marking its fidelity to a genre in music that recognizes how much it owes to the Gers village, Jazz in Marciac is rewriting its pastoral symphony in rhythm this year. Everyone — Mayor, godfathers, maids of honour, best men, bridesmaids and witnesses — will be raining confetti over the finest parade ever held.  First in line, in terms of protocol, are those that we listen to come rain or come shine: Norah Jones, the priestess with the voice of a healer, returns to jazz; George Benson is synonymous with scat and guitar in unison; Herbie Hancock is a keyboard geek and the vehicle for 60 years of jazz, all trends combined… In the seats reserved for the faithful we have: Roy Hargrove, the worthy narrator of forms inherited from bebop; Stanley Clarke, at the summit of his virtuoso double bass (and his brazen slap electric instrument); Biréli Lagrène, the expert climber roping down from every peak of inspiration that takes his fancy… And Joshua Redman, whose civilized manners hide a sense of freedom and purpose that his father would certainly have endorsed. And then we naturally come to our close family, gathered together under the protective wings of Wynton Marsalis, every one of whose contributions to Marciac has been duly notarized as authentic. The Latin cousins are coming too, bringing their dances and that Afro-Cuban legitimacy without which the festival would have to relinquish its exotic, heterogeneous and xenophile share in culture: Chucho Valdès and Roberto Fonseca feel at home there. Turbulent youngsters rightfully have their seats too: Emile Parisien (who has improvised a second birthplace for himself right here in Marciac on the benches of a school); Vincent Peirani, an accordionist whose intriguing ubiquity speaks volumes for him; Electro Deluxe and Panam Panic, retro and modern at the same time, they are seekers and finders of groove. Finally, all anniversaries have surprises: what statements are the Labèque Sisters going to make from behind a piano peppered with Basque percussion? Or Henri Texier, a totem of the double bass, lyrical and libertarian, giving Manu Katché the keys of the metronome? Today more than ever, the festival has taken up its summer quarters in every corner of the village: in Town Hall square to set the jazz tempo for the day; at the Astrada, the cosy concourse where established artists (and promises already kept) will be showing the most intimate aspects of their talents. And here and there, in the back of a bar, jazz will be spreading its ephemeral eternity. Forty candles. And the flame is still there. Forty young summers making this particular summer worth the wait for everyone…