Maurin Auxéméry is the designated heir to the post vacated by Laurent Saulnier, the one he calls his “mentor”. A long conversation with him, at the end of May, at the offices of Spectra gives us a vibrant insight into what this role of director of programming for the Francos and the Jazz Festival means to him. Festivals, music, jazz in particular, Montreal… all these things are so firmly rooted in Maurin Auxéméry’s DNA that he could hardly have escaped his fate.
Because, yes, the story of the arrival of Maurin Auxéméry at Spectra, which organizes the two events, is one that makes you believe in fate. “Can I be a little esoteric?” “, he even asks us before recounting his first steps in this programming team that he now leads.
So let’s go for a touch of esotericism. In his early twenties, when he was an intern for an archive management software company for museums, in France, he was the one on the team who went to get jazz records from Fnac (the equivalent of HMV) during the lunch hour to introduce music to his colleagues. “That’s when I thought this was what I wanted to do,” he says.
This moment had been in the making for even longer, since the 1980s. Maurin Auxéméry is from the town of Marciac, a small town in Gascony, in the south-west of France. There, the Jazz in Marciac festival takes place, a musical event that has enlivened summers in the city for 45 years now and which the young Maurin frequented every summer growing up.
When he was about 10 years old, his father sneaked him into the tent where the great trumpeter Wynton Marsalis played so he could watch the show. “There were plenty of trumpets on stage, a big ensemble,” he recalls, a smile on his face, as if telling this story for the first time. He had invited this young trumpeter, now deceased, whose name was Roy Hargrove. On stage, it goes in all directions, there are solos, they have attitude, they have class. And I turn to my father to tell him that it’s not so bad, his music, after all. »
After “a Bob Marley hiatus” as a teenager where he only listened to his music, Maurin returned to jazz, as well as hip-hop. One thing leading to another, his studies at a business school in France led him to an internship at the Montreal jazz label Effendi, during a trip to the metropolis that he imagined to be temporary and which ultimately lasted for 17 years. Here, he starts programming concerts, makes a name for himself in the industry.
And then, a few years after settling in Montreal, an encounter changes his life (warning: here we fall back into the esoteric and things of fate).
“It was morning, the day the Francos were launched,” Maurin recalls. I was still a programming agent, I was selling shows. I was talking with a colleague and we said to each other that it could be difficult with the broadcasters, that we would like to be programmers. And I said to him: “Me, if the Jazz Festival calls me, I say yes directly.” »
Once again, he launched his dream into the universe. You can imagine what happened next… That same evening, during the traditional Francos opening cocktail, the festival’s director of programming at the time, Caroline Johnson, asked him to speak to her in private for a few minutes. And she offers him a place on her programming team. “That was almost 10 years ago. I guess I was destined to come to this. »
The young forty-year-old, in 10 years, has come a long way, and has gained experience, surrounded by a mostly female team who gave him advice, made him understand the subtleties of their work.
Now he is the one who occupies the position that Laurent Saulnier and Caroline Johnson occupied. “I have to do some kind of refocusing. I was very Jazz Festival, and other colleagues, more focused on the Francos, even if I always participated in the decisions for the whole. With Laurent’s departure, I had to open my ears a little more. I am still in this process, there are lots of things that I discover in programming thanks to my great colleagues Isabelle Ouimet, Camille Guiton and Valérie Morel. »
In the team, but even more so as chief programmer, you have to think about all kinds of details. In particular to the multiple diversities that we expect to see on a major festival poster.
“I’ve changed a lot in 10 years. [As a festival organizer], we ask ourselves questions that we asked ourselves less before, ”says Maurin.
At Jazz, “it’s African-American music that we promote,” says Maurin Auxéméry. “We talk blues, we talk funk, we talk soul, R
And then there are the Francos. There are many women and several representatives of various communities on the program, but you only have to look at the headliners to see that there is still a long way to go. “Diversity has a harder time spreading at the Francos. Even if there is a real reflection on it. We are aware of this, we are trying to take action. »
Is this changing of the guard at Francos and Jazz synonymous with a radically new era? He doesn’t believe it. Laurent Saulnier has laid solid foundations, on which Maurin Auxéméry intends to continue to build. “Every day we try to come up with new ideas,” he says.
“The image I have is that of an ocean liner. If you have to turn left, it doesn’t happen all at once, it takes time to turn it. I don’t come to this position telling myself that I’m going to revolutionize everything, change everything. Obviously, the colors of our programming will be significantly different, but we work with an industry that is alive and that also determines things. We are going to develop projects in the coming years, little things that we put in place to add a different dimension. »
Free admission is one of the driving forces behind the festival, which makes it attractive to such a large audience, but also what makes it difficult to make money. This will probably be one of the great challenges of the Maurin Auxéméry era. “I hope this model will be possible, because I find it magnificent, he launches today in the universe. That’s one of the advantages of these two festivals, which are cultural engines. Culture is a question of elevation, a question of learning and a question of openness to art. This is what the Jazz Festival and the Francos do. »
