Festival Violons en Cormatinois?

The guitar festival in Cormatin has come to an end. The last concert took place in the small Romanesque church of Chazelle, which is literally next door to us. On the program were works by Bach for solo violin, played by the young violinist Nicolas Dautricourt.
Looking in retrospect at the festival, there certainly was something strange about it. Not only was there not even one concert in the church of Cormatin, but on 3 concerts out of 5 not even a trace of a guitar was to be found…. A bit strange for a series called “Festival Guitares en Cormatinois”!
On the other hand, who cares when the music is good. We walked up to the church from home at about half past eight in the evening, armed with two cushions in order to be able to sit a bit more comfortable. Arriving at the church the whole in-crowd of Cormatin was there: the mayor and his wife, Pascale P. and some other members of the town council, the jeweller of “La Gadrielle” Patrick V. and his wife, the gardener Remy M. with wife and kids, who live in Chazelle, half the people who are involved in helping out at every event, the representative of the Conseil Général of Saône-et-Loire, our cultural attaché (as we call her) of the “Journal de S&L”, heavily perfumed with her favourite perfume “Gauloise” (stale cigarette smoke), in short, everyone of any importance in Cormatin and surroundings was present. Luckily there were also quite a few faces we had never seen before, or faces we only knew from the concerts around here. Anyway, it is the music that counts, and not the ambiance. Dautricourt happened to be a very talented violin player, who gave Bach just that little extra which turned the evening into an excellent concert night. The public gave him an ovation, followed by rhythmic hand clapping, the French way of begging for an encore. And it worked; he gave them two.
This time the planning with regards to selling drinks was slightly better organised then during the last concert we saw in this series. This time there was a proper break, during which one could choose to buy one or more of the four Cd’s Dautricourt had recorded. The buvette was open, and the sales of “Crémant de Bourgogne” could not have been better. And the cushions? We did not need them this time, for the simple reason that the church did have chairs, and they were much more comfortable than the run of the mill church bench!
The website of La Tuilerie de Chazelle