Photograph of Jean-Philippe Koch and David Kintzinger of Dock in Absolute by Colin May

Jammin’ Juan
Palais des Congress, Juan-Les-Pins
29th-31st October 2025

PROLOGUE

Bands, managers and agents, festival directors and bookers, representatives of jazz institutions and media people gathered in Juan-Les -Pins for the eighth edition of the Jammin’ jazz market.

In the gaps in the packed programme of eighteen showcases and three concerts across the three days, the bar was a hive of conversations between the bands, bookers and festival directors.

I focused on the 35 minute showcases. Nearly all the acts selected to play from the many applicants were new to me The showcases were not only “La scene des jeunes talents du jazz” but also the scene of more experienced groups bringing new repertoire.

Jammin’s broad brush approach to contemporary jazz spanned acts as different as the jazz inflected solo performance of Melissa Weikaart’s singer songwriter avant pop with her own minimalist piano accompaniment and the quasi experimental Obradovic-Tixier Duo, the “hyper duo” of drummer Lada Obradovic and David Tixier on piano, synthesiser and laptop with Tixier making extensive use of electronics, and about whom I wrote as part of my report on this year’s Jammin’ Summer Sessions.
https://www.thejazzmann.com/features/article/jammin-summer-sessions-jazz-a-juan-2025-petite-pinede-juan-les-pins-france

There were five different piano trios. In one the pianist Jean Saint Loubert also played flugelhorn very beautifully. There were quartets and quintets, some with brass including bassist Vladimir Torres’ quintet which had a trombonist and soprano saxophonist. The contrasting sound worlds worked well together and soprano saxophonist Hugo Diaz was an outstanding soloist.

What all the showcase acts had in common was a commitment to playing their own original music. There were only three or four covers played in total across the eighteen showcases.

This year seven showcases featured women which was good to see, albeit all in the traditional woman in jazz role of singer with the exception of Lada Obradovic. The overall quality of the showcases was high, and there was a buzz around the event which contributed to a very enjoyable three days. What follows is brief reports on some of the groups to illustrate the variety of what was there to be discovered.

LEA MARIA FRIES

Swiss singer Lea Maria Fries is an early career artist with one album to her name, but already has a distinctive sound. In one song ‘Witches Broom’ she sang of escaping daily life into space, and there was an otherworldly quality to her singing enhanced by sometimes using electronic effects. Bjork came to mind, and when I was able to have a brief word with her in the bar afterwards she cited the Icelandic superstar among a long list of influences that also included Chopin.

Her sound was a mix of jazz, experimental pop and traces of blues and of soul. She was supported by a trio of musicians and her sound engineer. Her excellent pianist Gautier Toux to whom she gave space for three or four solos showed himself to be another jeune talent and threatened to steal the set. Fries and her trio’s finale was a chant embedded in a sheet of sound which the sound engineer
must have had a hand in.

While she said she has been influenced by many, Maria Fries is a young artist making music that is very much her own.

MARTHE x PILANI BUBU

This group’s title needs a little unravelling. Marthe are a four piece jazz rock collective: trumpet, sax/clarinet, prepared guitar and drums who played at a previous Jammin’ Juan. They heard the voice of South African singer/poet Pilani Bubu on the radio, travelled to South Africa to meet her and a new collaboration was born.

Pilani Bubu’s crystalline clear and beautiful voice and Marthe’s instrumentals really gelled. She sang and recited poetry slam style in Xhosa, and the textures of the jazzy arrangements complemented her voice. The prepared guitar sounded at times close to the humming of the Uhadi, a single stringed bowed gourd that’s part of Xhosa culture.

Pilani Bubu’s gestures as she sang added to her charismatic appeal. About halfway through she explained that her songs dug into the social tension, history and the possible future of South Africa. The first numbers were about the undermining of humanity by the gap between rich and poor in South Africa which she said is the biggest in the world.

She then continued with songs praising the importance of women in the struggle against apartheid and in reshaping her country’s future. Her passionate singing was matched by searing trumpet solos from Marthe’s Florent Briqué.

With Damien Bernard’s drumming sustaining the tension throughout the set, this collaboration was a successful and captivating coming together of South African/Xhosa culture and western jazz rock.

VERB

The Amiens based trio of Noam Duboille piano, Charles Thuillier double bass and Garcia Etoa Ottu drums are the sort of young contemporary jazz trio that Jammin’ Juan aims to help. They have already got a springboard award won at Jazz a Vienne in 2023 on their mantelpiece, and in Spring 2024 released their debut album ‘Symbiose’.

For their showcase they played music intended for their second album which they said is in preparation. Their first four tunes were quite contemplative with Charles Thuillier not plucking his instrument but playing arco double bass. The frequency and prominence of him doing this was a difference between Verb’s showcase and that of other trios.

They played an elegiac number that was announced as being for a special person who had been lost. It finished with the solo arco bass (the heartbeat?) slowing and eventually coming to a stop.

In contrast, the trio followed this with a catchy upbeat composition with their fine ensemble playing getting faster and faster. They sustained the upbeat mood by concluding their thirty-five minutes with a bouncy number that had a strong African grove and featured Cameroonian Garcia Etou Ottou’s polyrhythmic drumming. It was an uplifting end to an intriguing set.

WHO PARKED THE CAR

Who Parked the Car are usually eight or nine strong. However there was only space for six on the Jammin’ stage but that still made them one of the largest groups having a showcase. The young group whose members are between 23 and 30 years old had won a ‘Made in New York Jazz Competition’ awarded by a panel which included Randy Brecker.

The band members were still buzzing from that success, and at the end of their showcase they picked up another the prize, this for a composition at Jammin’ Juan by new talent awarded by the National Union of Composers(UNAC).

Fronted by the attractive voice of the very personable Alice Chabhazian, their groove-laden music blended jazz, funk and soul, and they had an energy and joie de vivre was infectious. I particularly liked the clever and amusing ‘Sugar Rush’ with sudden bursts from the instrumentalists and lyrics sung in a self-deprecating style by Alice Chabhazian.

This was a band likely to get plenty of attention from the directors of summer festivals who were there at Jammin’ Juan

DOCK IN ABSOLUTE

The Luxembourg trio of piano, electric bass and drums was one of the more experienced groups playing a showcase. I had heard them once before at a pre- covid Jammin’ Juan and remembered being impressed then by their drive and strong grove, and pianist Jean-Philippe Koch’s sure touch. But I had forgotten how rich in appealing melodies their music is even if then they sometimes subvert them.

This melodic content was there whether John-Philippe Koch was pounding the piano keys over David Kintzinger’s growling grungy electric bass or the trio were playing a delicate ballad-like tune with the piano sounding like gently flowing water only to have that idea undermined by Victor Kraus’s by rapid drum shots.

Koch’s classical training showed in an unhurried unaccompanied solo, and the trio finished with ‘Heartbeat’, from their most recent album’ [R3}FL3KT’ the melody sometimes being carried by the bass guitar with the drum and piano providing the pulse.

Dock in Absolute already have an international career that reaches beyond Europe and had just played dates in China and had appearances not only at the Rome jazz festival but also in Mexico coming up. On the strength of their highly accomplished showcase it’s easy to see why.

ALEX GRENIER QUARTET

Cometh the hour cometh the jazz man or woman. I was flagging after seventeen showcases in two overheated rooms when along came the eighteenth and final showcase, beanie-wearing guitarist Alex Grenier with his quartet to revive me.

This was jazz with a smile on its face played by experienced musicians with smiles on their faces. Grenier’s guitar led his colleagues in straight ahead melodic jazz that had a tinge of the blues. Uplifting with plenty of energy and warmth, when they built up to a storm you felt it was a friendly storm. At that moment it was just what I needed, and afterwards I headed to the train station with a smile on my face.

Details of the full programme with information about all the bands and links to their social media is still available on the Jammin’ Juan web pages:
https://jammin.jazzajuan.com/en/programme-jammin-juan-2025

COLIN MAY

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