FLASHARMONICA

Feufliâzhe is a festival celebrating Alpine music, music of all genres and styles. Based mainly on traditional and folk music, both the older, collected kind and something more contemporary.

The Flasharmonica trio, will serve you folk, country and even more commercial music!

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Dessin de Régis Hector détourné

Since he was nine Jean-Pierre Rubin has been playing the harmonica with his friend Hervé Lacorbière who used to live in the same builsing, in Annecy-le-Vieux. They have grown up together. During their military service, Hervé studied tirelessly his harmonica technique to become a virtuoso. They won the France championships (semifinal in Lyon and final in Paris) before they turned thirty years old. The got the third place at the World championships in 1967 in Karlsruhe .

These championships are organized by the city of Trossingen in Germany, where the Hohner harmonicas factory and the harmonica museum are located. Moreover, Trossingen is twinned with Cluses in Haute-Savoie, where a festival of harmonicas takes place, in the valley of the Arve river, every two years. The group was initially a trio: Michel, their friend who played the bass harmonica has since passed away. The three of them opened the concerts in Lyon of Johnny Hallyday and Michel Sardou. They played in galas, amongst big names such as Michel Fugain and Les Charlots or Annie Cordy. Sacha Distel told them to move to Paris as at the time communications were not simple between the province and the capital. Everything was happening in Paris. The great impresarios were in the big city and the trio met people like Charley Marouani or Johnny Stark.

They were well requested to accompany the stars and the bands of the 70s, as there were a lot of guitarists but few harmonicists! They even recorded some 45 rpm.

Nevertheless a choice had to be made: to live in Paris where they needed to work really hard in the showbiz for a random outcome or to stay in Annecy and built a stable career in the big company NTN-SNR, who makes ball bearings. They choose to stay in Haute-Savoie and since 1972 they took a break from harmonica.

In order to keep a link with music, they played at the traditional Saturday night balls for twenty years all around Savoy region and with a group of eight musicians. Jean-Pierre was at the synthesizer. Their name at the time was a premonition: they were already called FLASH ... dance.

Back to the harmonicas in 1992, they started playing variety and jazz. Then, influenced by Charly McCoy who toured Europe since 1989 (and who performed at St-André-de-Boëge country festival), they listened more and they specialized in American folk music (The bluest eyes in Texas, Six days on the road) with European incursions like Ennio Morricone. Christian Paraire entered the group and brought a sleek rhythm to the band with his bass guitar.

For our Alpine music festival they prepared some Savoyard songs, but keeping close their first love: the musette (Etoile des neiges, rock tyrolien, la chanson du reblochon, Petit Jean-Jean, le Vieux chalet). They also promised that they would prepare music from the Alps traditional folk.

Hervé, the soloist, uses a 16-hole chromatic harmonica, which is quite large, and a Marine Band which is the most famous diatonic harmonicas ever made, released in 1896. The Marine Band would have become the favorite instrument of African-american musicians, originating the birth of Blues and it owes its fame to big artists like Bob Dylan, Neil Young, John Lennon or Bruce Springsteen.

Jean-Pierre accompanies with his harmonica Chord Polyphonia with 48 chords (the major chords: blowing up; the minor chords: blowing down; the seventh chords: sucking up, the chords diminished and increased: sucking down) and you can do a lot of things with it, he says.

Contacts :

www.flasharmonicas.com