Jac & Marie : reviewing quickly 2017
In brief, an active year, as ever. A very full academic year for Marie in her university, with some additional works, being once more the head of a mission for Culture, and also… of a collective legal action with a large group of colleagues against their director for moral and sexual harassment. Happily, a more relax year for Jac including various tasks of musical organization. And, indeed, a full basket of choral music for both: you never change a winning team J
Some milestones of a year in pictures : • On the music side: Three programs for a ten of concerts in Normandy with our little vocal ensemble La Fugue et Compagnie,
Émois, émois, a program for the fun and for laughs with accordion…
…a more serious program of sacred baroque music …and a program for Christmas with lanterns.
nd
The co-‐organization of the 2 Lebanese International Choral Festival in May,
Concert with 300 children of various refugee’s camps in Lebanon.
A visit to the 1st European Festival of Secondary schools Choirs in France, in June… …then to the 11th World Symposium on Choral Music in Barcelona by the end of July… Gala concert in the Palau de la Musica.
…followed by splendid holidays in Catalonia
with a tourist guide in the hand… as well in the vermouth bistros as in the Roman cloisters.
…and to get a stiff neck looking up to the vertiginous vaults of the Sagrada Familia with Without forgetting to doing justice to the local gastronomy… some other hundreds of visitors.
On the family side: Some nice and fond moments with our children (Grégoire 40, music teacher and choir conductor; Clémentine 39, chief of staff of a university, and Julien, 37, electronic engineer) and our grand-‐children (Léo 10, Alix 7 et Daphné 3) who are all superbly growing up •
The tribe, on spring, in the garden (Catherine, Marie’s mother, Jac, Julien Marie, Clémentine, Alix, Daphné, Grégoire, Léo)
And the tribe digesting the Xmas lunch … celebrated at the beginning of March as we didn’t find a date before to meet all together with everybody J
Without forgetting some other bright moments shared with dear friends
Some pictures made with those who came from far:
Merry feast in à Louvigny, with our dear and old friend Pat Abbott (Montréal) who came to spend a week in Normandy in November, and Jan & Peter Broadbent (London), the Polyfollias team, some members of La Fugue et Cie and our children.
Breakfast in Louvigny with our Lebanese friends Barkev Taslakian and Roula Abou Baker
And a collective selfie taken on New Year’s Eve in Cambridge with the Broadbent and our old friend Fred Thibault and his wife Valérie, temporarily exiled in the Brexitland.
• On the personal life side: Always an intense “affectactive” life… …or to the jazz pianists of Beirut in vamping on the sea shore. The beautiful sexygenarian -‐ madame Marie – make loose their heads to the walls of Tarragona… While monsieur Jac practise his natural charm on the nicest sisters of the Maronite convents of the Lebanese Mountain… …or on the Estonian skating colleagues in the corridors of the Symposium.
Joking aside: 2017 has also undergone its fair share of bothers and of little miseries of aging which rise like the tide in the Mont saint-‐Michel Bay, with its tidal bore of grinding joints and of invasive rusting.
But, we deal with! While enjoying the pleasure, daily renewed, to have a beautiful house, with a little park, with little birds and tall trees in our beautiful Normandy, always pleasantly wet and temperate at this time of climate disturbances.
In brief: we always want to crunch the life full tooth, with 15 projects in advance. It allows us to grow old as pleasantly as possible.
We hope to continue like that in 2018 and we send you again our kindest regards. Jac & Marie.