Les Productions fumière présentent CONTRASTE "du Classique au Jazz." Theatre National du Palais de Chaillot, Paris, 15 Juin, 1945. Upright folio. 56 pp. Gray wrappers with raised embossed printing, bound with French red/white/blue twisted silk cord. Semigloss pages printed in black and white with blue highlighting, and including many illustration pages and some advertisements, interspersed with heavy stock pages, some with tipped-in semigloss reproductions of historic documents. Stamped 111 from a total edition of 1000 copies printed. Wrappers somewhat foxed, else fine. From the collection of Parisian art dealer and collector Michel de Bry (1890-1970), who with the legendary jazz impresario Hugues Panassié, organized the historic 1948 Festival International du Jazz in Nice.

Fascinating souvenir program from a June 15, 1945 Paris festival concert organized by the Mouvement de Libération Nationale and presided over by General Pierre Dejussieu-Poncarral, leader of the French Resistance, "upon return from the Nazi Concentration Camps Buchenwald, Dora and Belsen," just a few weeks after the signing of the Armistice and less than a year after the liberation of Paris.

Very rare. One of one thousand copies, but given that this was evidently a significant undertaking with the involvement of many important figures, we are surprised to find no mentions of this concert anywhere in standard jazz or post-war French critical literature. No copies of the program are recorded by WorldCat, and we have found no record of any other example having appeared at auction or in the trade. 

The concert concept was "Contrast 'from Classical to Jazz' -  Two Expressions Characterized by One Same Thought: MUSIC" and the central heavy-stock central program sheet features, on the left, the musical offerings in the section "Du Classique," and on the facing right page, "Du Jazz." Classical works by Rimsky-Korsakow, Berlioz, Moussorgsky, Saint-Saens, Lalo, Mozart, Rossini, Gounod and Tchaikovsky were performed by the Orchestre des Concerts Colonne under the direction of Georges Tzipine; opera singers Paul Cabanel, Jean Babilée, and Odette Turba-Rabier; violinist Roland Charmy; and ballerina Solange Schwartz. The Jazz section consisted of performances by the Hot Club de France with Jerry Mengo, Hubert Rostaing and Arthur Briggs; singer Georges Ulmer; pianist Léo Chauliac; duo singers Les Soeurs Étienne, and a swing dance couple. Finally, the program concluded with a performance of Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue," (presumably to show the fusing of "contrasting" idioms), and a recitation by Robert Vidalin of the Comédie Française ("returned from London"), of a selection of "Poems of the Resistance."