Guitares en Cormatinois 2013

The summer has started, and so has the festival season. Chapaize is on the roll, with its concert series "Chapaize Culture", Cluny will not stay behind, and fortunately, despite the fact that "Les Rendez-Vous de Cormatin" most likely has given the ghost, the "Festival Guitares en Cormatinois" will start very soon.
As each year the festival offers 5 concerts, this time fortunately with the emphasis on "Guitar", and even better : instead of 3 or 4 different venues, all concerts will be given in one place, the lovely romanesque church of Chazelle.
I just chose a selection from the illustrious names I can vouch for:

- Eric Francerie - guitar and Jérémy Vannereau - bandonéon with a Piazzola program

- Emmanuel Rossfelder with a guitar recital

- Nicolas Dautricourt - violin and Thibault Cauvin - guitar with a mixed program of classical and jazz; based on the instruments they are playing the jazz part will most likely consist of pieces not too dissimilar to the repertoire of the Hot Club de France.

The prices are reasonable, the venue has excellent acoustics, in a word, what is stopping you?
Reservations can be made by phone : 03 85 50 19 06 or 06 43 66 56 37, or we can arrange tickets for interested parties.
An email will suffice, payment can be arranged later!

Het programma voor 2013

One thing leads to another

What is the link between a baptismal font, moved from an ancient romanesque chapel, attached to a farm along the Voie Verte, and a number of gypsum kilns roughly 30 km to the east of the chapel?
The link may be a bit farfetched, bet there certainly is one! After someone of the “Association des amis du vieux Berzé (AVB)" had approached us (see the previous blog), it seemed logical to have a good snoop around their website. Under “Partenaires” I found a link towards a site specialised in cataloguing romanesque churches in Burgundy, “Le site sur l'Art Roman en Bourgogne". And since I am also slightly interested in this subject, I decided to have a look at this site, and especially at the “Saône-et-Loire” page.

After having pressed “Page down” twice I had a number of pictures of romanesque churches with place names in alphabetical order on my screen, on which Chazelle seemed to be missing. When one clicked on a picture, a page opened with a description of the church, a number of pictures, and sometimes with even more additional information, all in French. After having clicked on the “Contact” page I found out that the site was created by a Dutchman, Eduard van Boxtel, and of course an e-mail was quickly concocted telling him that there was no description of Chazelle on his site. Well, was I wrong!
I received a very friendly answer, with a link to the place where Chazelle was mentioned, even though there were not yet pictures available. My built-in impatience was partially to blame for this. Had I pressed the “Page down” button a few times more, I would have ended up in a number of lists of towns and villages, each hosting one or more romanesque churches, ordered by importance ranging from six stars to one star. And indeed, Chazelle was mentioned there as well. After some correspondence with the webmaster I decided to help him with his collection of photos by giving him a few pictures of the churches he had nothing of.

Whilst browsing through my pictures of romanesque churches I stumbled upon Collonges, a village signposted as “Chapelle romane” along the road from Cluny to Cormatin. This chapel hosts a romanesque baptismal font, which belonged originally to another chapel in Cotte, and was transferred to Colonges where it is used as a holy water font. And although the chapel in Collonges is not romanesque at all, Eduard found the story interesting, even more when I presented him with a photograph of this holy grail.
Since then we are regularly in touch about photographs and details, and I could even bring an unsightly small romanesque chapel in Cormatin to his attention, of which he had even never heard.
An so one thing leads to another. For those interested in romanesque architecture Le site sur l'Art Roman en Bourgogne offers a wealth of information on the subject. And those with a bit more patience than I can muster can find much more on this site: information about romanesque architecture in general, a glossary of French terms, architecture of Rome, Byzantine art, and possibly more, if one has the patience to look for it....

For our own website click here.