June 13 - 19

Festival season is picking up speed...as summer progresses, these listings will become more & more festival-obsessed...can't be helped. The Paris Jazz continues in the Parc Florale (metro Chateau de Vincennes, music at 3pm & 4:30pm Friday & Saturday--see last week's listings for more details!)

Tonight (Wednesday) there's a flamenco at L'Archipel (though how we're supposed to dance in the cinema-style performance space, i dunno) [17 bd. Strasbourg, metro Strasbourg-St.Denis, 18 euros]

Thursday, heading to Pantin for a celebration of a fab Hungarian label, BMC (Budapest Music Center)--two bands, UNIT and MONIO MANIA, led by sax eccentric Christophe Monniot. At the Dynamo [to reserve, call 01.49.22.10.10, take metro to 4-Chemins/Pantin, 9 rue Gabrielle Josserand] Alternately, if you want to stay downtown, check out sax player Francois Theberge with lanky Jobic Le Masson on keyboards at the 7 LEZARDS [10pm, 12 - 16 euros]

The jazz fest of La Defense starts their travelling showcases this weekend with Nu Jazz Friday night in Boulogne-Billancourt in the Grande Place [at 7pm] and Jazz Manouche on Saturday [8pm at Suresnes, on the Terrace de Fecheray] --both shows are free. In ten days this festival moves to its usual location, turning the Esplanade of La Defense into the best place to picnic over lunchhour...

Meanwhile, until June 24th, there's the Couleurs du Jazz Festival in Corbeil...which is a town barely 40 minutes by RER from Paris. The complete schedule is here...including a stellar Saturday night show with Demi Evans (think Nina Simone & you're going in the right sound direction, with a hint of Texas) and Elisabeth Kontomanou.

Also this weekend, the extremely interesting Desert Blues multimedia project over at the Quai Branly, featuring jazz and other styles of music from Mali: Habib Koité (a singer & griot storyteller), Afel Bocoum (who follows in the footsteps of Ali Farka Toure), and the group Tartit (a group of women musicians from Timbuktu) [at the Musee du Quai Branly, 218 rue de l'Universite--but don't go if you don't already have a ticket...it's now sold-out.]

Finally, on Monday there's an evening to support Amnesty International at the New Morning [tickets at FNAC, Virgin, etc, 7 - 9 rue des Petites-Ecuries, metro Chateau Rouge] featuring the Andre Ceccarelli quartet, the Sara Lazarus trio, and the Louis Sclavis quartet.