February 2015

Hello everyone,

As we were traveling on the roads of France and Switzerland as of January 5, we were partly spared the violent events that have devastated then galvanized the French at the beginning of this year. As in the days of music tours, I spend a good time at each stop to find, close to the location of our conference, a friendly and picturesque place to stay; new methods using the Internet have opened a huge field of possibilities, at very reasonable prices - this is also the advice that I give to those who want to travel to some tropical island: specialized sites often allow making great discoveries. So this month, we stayed on the banks of Annecy Lake in the first snow flurries, then in a spacious apartment overlooking Lake Neuchâtel; at the home of our friend Alain Morisod, a very popular musician in Switzerland and producer of the show "Les Coups de Coeur," or in a residence near by Petite France, Strasbourg.

The premium hospitality however returns to a small village near Colmar, Saint Hippolyte. We have an address for two nights in a beautiful traditional Alsatian house and pastry found in front gave us a delicious kouglof, probably as good as the anti-nuclear had planned to offer Merkel, Hollande there a few days ago ... like, back in Paris in early February busy writing this monthly newsletter, just thinking about it, I leave the computer for a moment to go cut me a slice of kouglof with cup of tea!

During our tours there are these stopovers, these times on the road (Francette being much better conductor than me, she is in charge), and then there comes the time for conferences; journalists who interview me for the press of each region we visit often ask me whether it's not too hard to find myself in theaters and cinemas, surrounded by bad weather when we return from our distant, sunny islands... Well no, I love - almost as much as the "airport days" that dot our long distance journeys ? I love almost as much our stop-overs in small theaters or huge complexes including ten, twenty cinemas; it's a curious world, where we?re surrounded by large posters of the films currently shown, kakemonos or giant screens touting each film, or characters cut out or molded from cartoons or adventure films in the program. Often, there is no backstage, and I often find myself obliged to wait in the lobby for the last spectators to enter, then I enter the theatre through the same door as them; it is not uncommon, our tour meeting with good success, to have to console people ? who have sometimes come from dozens of kilometers away, and that safety rules do not allow to enter an already full room

And then I always enjoy commenting ?live? our film; even though I have already done it at least two hundred times, I always have fun trying to make it the end of each sentence exactly coincide with a musical crescendo or the beginning of a phrase sung by one of Reunion, Mauritians or Seychellois musicians who in some way accompany me on this journey. And when all has gone well, when viewers have come in numbers to ask me to autograph a book or a DVD, or even one of my records from the sixties or one of my first books, well, it's a pleasure to hit the road again to discover the next day another corner of this beautiful continent of Europe.