Paris Journal 2012 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com
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Music wove its way into the day, several times. I went to the Saint Sulpice church at 11:30AM to hear the organ play after mass. Mass was still happening when I arrived. I quietly took a seat and participated. The church announcements for events happening through the week were made at the end of the service. That struck me as anticlimactic. I found myself thinking that I much prefer having the announcements near the beginning of the service, as is done in my church back home. To listen to the mundane after one of Pastor John’s great sermons would be, well, anticlimactic. I was pleased that I could understand the priest. His diction was clear. My French was functioning. The grand Aristide Cavaillé-Coll organ at Saint Sulpice is an honor to play. That honor is shared by a number of great organists from around the world every year. (The organ was originally built by François-Henri Clicquot, but was reconstructed by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll. Nevertheless, the Saint Sulpice organ is considered to be Cavaillé-Coll’s greatest. ) Yesterday’s organist was David Baskeyfield, from Rochester, New York. The church staff erroneously listed his last name as “Baskerfield.” Tsk. I listened to him play for a little over half an hour, after the mass ended. He’s a talented young man! This is the 150th anniversary of the organ at Saint Sulpice. A notice posted outside the church announces that the schedule for organ concerts commemorating this anniversary is available in the Sacristy. That beautiful room, by the way, was restored mostly with donations made by Americans, according to a guide who talked to us a few years ago. What a blessing it is to have such spectacularly moving music so close by! Back at “our” apartment, I prepared a small brunch for us, and then Tom and I went out for our Sunday afternoon walk. Intending to go to the riverbanks again, we had to stop first at the intersection of the rue Bonaparte and the boulevard Saint-Germain. The reason? La Planche a Dixie was there, already, setting up to play in their usual Sunday afternoon spot! We’ve been fans of this Dixieland jazz group for years. Its leader is the percussionist, Christian Giovanardi. Like Tom’s group, Island Jazz, there are some core players, but others come and go according to their availability on certain dates. But Christian controls the sound that is La Planche a Dixie. “La Planche,” of course, refers to the washboard that Christian plays. Make no mistake, Christian is a serious percussionist, and I’m sure he has more than one full drum set, numerous cymbals, and lots of hardware. For playing out on the streets of Paris, however, you can’t beat the convenience of a washboard, if you’re a percussionist, and if you’re playing Dixie. Christian has customized his washboards. This time, he was wearing a washboard that was truly a washboard, wood frame and all. But it had a few attachments that Christian had customized, like a conduit pipe sticking out at the bottom of the board, with a small cymbal attached. Like other washboard percussionists, Christian had metal thimbles on each finger. He got an incredible, varied amount of sound out of that contraption, playing with each hand as if each hand had a mind of its own. We already own La Planche a Dixie’s two CDs, but Tom bought another one yesterday so that we could give it to our friend Christina, the multi-talented wife of a pizza baron, who has taught herself to play the washboard. She performs with a bluegrass group sometimes when she’s in Ohio. The title of the CD that we bought for Christina is
“Washboard Wiggles.” Cute. Christian studied percussion at the École Dante Agostini/Kenny Clark. Kenny Clark was an American drummer who lived for many years in France. When he graduated, Christian wanted to see the world, so he worked for most of his career as a musician on cruise ships and for grand hotel chains like Pulmann and Sofitel, in places like Tunisia and the Antilles. When he returned, he spent six years in a piano bar in Montparnasse, then he created La Planche a Dixie, in 1995. So the group is sort of an in-retirement avocation. We listened to the group for quite a while, and when they took a break, we departed to continue our walk. Tom said he really wanted to walk along the rue Jacob, and that made sense because in the afternoon heat, that street was nice and shady. We turned right onto the rue de l’Abbaye, headed toward the beginning of rue Jacob. Once again, we were stopped by beautiful music. Sitting on a stool on the steps to a back, side entrance to the Saint-Germain-des-Pres church was an aging, tall, slender classical guitarist. He was making magical music. We stopped to listen for a long time. At some point, after about 20 minutes, I put a 5-euro note in his open guitar case. We stayed on for another 40 minutes or so, and finally thanked him during a break, and left to continue walking up through the rue de Furstemberg. Soon after we’d started listening to the classical guitarist, another guitarist came along, carrying his guitar case and a knapsack of equipment. He quickly settled down to listen with us. We all sat on metal railings that separate the sidewalk from the street, keeping the parked cars where they belong, in the street. At its peak, our makeshift open-air theatre held a dozen spectators. There would have been more in a more prominent, busy location, but this musician seemed to be a foreigner who did not speak French. I doubt that he had the requisite buskers’ permit to be in one of the better spots, like where La Planche a Dixie was playing, out on the grand boulevard Saint-Germain. Traffic noise would have drowned out his music there, anyway. The classical guitarist knew how to say things like “thank you, ma’m,” in French (when one would put a donation in his guitar case), but when he spoke spontaneously, he spoke English, with some kind of accent. I’d like to know his story. He is a master of classical guitar. When he took a break, the other guitarist who’d been listening came up to him to engage him in conversation. He offered a hand-rolled cigarette, but the master said no thanks. The rue de Furstemberg is, I think, one of the most picturesque, romantic spots in Paris, with its leafy, stone-paved square and old-fashioned 5-light street lamp. It led us to the beginning of rue Jacob, Tom’s favorite street for window shopping. Rue Jacob has many beautiful, quaint old shops with lovely things, and window displays are artfully arranged. Sunday is a great day for strolling along the rue Jacob; there is not much traffic at all, and not so many pedestrians clog the narrow sidewalks, because the shops are closed. That doesn’t stop us from window shopping, which is all we want to do anyway. Where the rue Jacob ends at the edge of the 6th arrondissement, it just changes names as it continues through the 7th arrondissement as the rue de l’Université. Unlike the 6th, however, the shops of the 7th, along the rue de l’Université, were open on Sunday. These are mostly antique dealers. Sandwiched between the rue de l’Université and the rue Montalembert was an entire hôtel particulier (stately home) for sale! Still undergoing renovation, this home will require a buyer of substantial means. We walked along its front and side, peeking into the windows, and then looked at the small garden on the Montalembert side. While some of the rooms looked nice, with their old paneling and wood floors, others had been remuddled as offices at some point. On the rue Montalembert, we passed two five-star hotels (Montalembert and Pont Royal) and then circled back toward home on the boulevard Saint-Germain. We passed the Ralph Lauren store, where Ralph has a restaurant that sells hamburgers and hot dogs (a double hamburger is 40 euros). It was open on Sunday, to be sure, and it was busy. After resting and showering, we prepared to go out for the evening. A discussion of possible Sunday night restaurants led us to the conclusion that Les Ministères was where we wanted to dine. Tom called to make a reservation. That meant another half hour of walking each way, but that was no problem. The evening air was beginning to cool. When we were almost there, I realized that this was a particularly good choice for that hot day, because almost certainly, Les Ministères would be air conditioned. I was right. It was. I even put my lightweight jacket on when we were halfway through dinner. That’s something I’m used to doing in Florida, but not in France. Les Ministères is a big restaurant, and it is beautiful, in a slightly over-the-top, Art Nouveau sort-of way. It gets its name from the fact that so many government ministries are nearby. Located on the rue de Bac, just south of the boulevard Saint Germain, the restaurant is strategically just north of the rue Montalembert, where those 5-star hotels are. Once again, we ordered one three-course fixed-price menu (at 29 euros), and one main course. This normally works out to be the right amount for us when we are quite hungry. But the servings are large at Les Ministères, so I could not finish mine. Our shared starter was a small dish of vegetable ravioli in a soup of creamy parmesan sauce, with some parmesan shavings on top. Tom’s main course was an excellent Chateaubriand, cooked medium-rare, and served with delicious roasted potato slices as well as green beans. Mine was a brochette of duck breast, in a caramel-balsamic sauce that was fascinatingly tangy and good. The garnitures were the roasted potato slices like Tom’s, but also a concoction that the restaurant called polenta. It was not like any polenta I’ve ever experienced before. This was made entirely with fresh corn – no corn meal, and no graininess. There were fresh corn kernels in it, and the body of it was more like creamed corn, but a rarified French version of creamed corn, made with crème fraiche. This “polenta” was heavenly and fresh, smooth and very rich. I had to leave most of the potatoes and much of the polenta on the plate. The dish was great, but too much. For dessert, we shared a good slice of chocolate tarte/cake. One reason Tom likes Les Ministères, besides the fine food, is that it is comfortable and spacious. You are not squeezed in, elbow-to-elbow, at Les Ministères. The servers are nicely attired in black and white, and they are polite and friendly. They offer to speak English, and they offer English menus. (We prefer the French, and that’s fine with them.) Two young couples entered the restaurant and asked for a table of four. They were seated near us. They were from some foreign country, and were relying on their heavily accented English. The server asked where they were from; Moscow was the answer! In the late 19th century, the space that is now Les Ministères was a billiard hall. After World War I, it was transformed into a restaurant. It claims to have been a secret meeting place for the Resistance in World War II. For many years, until 1964, it was run by a woman named Madame Gardes. The restaurant likes to point out that the famous French publishing house and bookstore chain, Gallimard, is nearby. We noticed that a street near there that had been called rue Sébastien Bottin is now called rue Gaston Gallimard, after the founder of that publishing house, said by The Guardian to have “the best backlist in the world.” That distinction certainly merits a street name! |
Monday, September 10, 2012
As
we began our walk, I spotted this dragon in a shop window on the rue
Bonaparte. Tom noticed that the wooden
sculpture was put together with a nail gun.
Christian
Giovanardi and his group, La Planche
a Dixie, plays on Sunday afternoons in front of the church of Saint Germain des Pres.
The
interior of Les Ministères.
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