before a concert-event at the Châtelet, its director remembers

A square terrace on the pedestrian rue des Lombards, in the heart of Paris, and in the background, behind a wall lined with concert posters, two clubs dedicated to jazz, the Sunside on the ground floor and the Sunset in the basement . It is the latter, transformed into a jazz scene in 1982, whose Stéphane Portet, its director and programmer, celebrates 40 years with the help of musician friends, some of whom accompanied his first steps in the club, such as the pianist Laurent de Wilde or the saxophonist Géraldine Laurent.

The Sunset is a family business which Stéphane Portet took over in 1993, the founder being his father, Jean-Marc Portet. Today, the establishment with two floors, open seven days a week, with its gauges of one hundred seats per room, has established itself as one of the most important jazz scenes in Paris.

Since December 17, 2021, and until February 8, 2022, the Sunset is celebrating its 40th anniversary with a program including artists who have marked its history. The high point of the festivities will be the concert organized on Friday January 28 in Paris, at the Théâtre du Châtelet, a few dozen meters from rue des Lombards. Several jazz personalities take part, including organist Rhoda Scott and pianists Yaron Herman and Jacky Terrasson. In the meantime, Stéphane Portet tells us about his adventure at Sunset.

Franceinfo Culture: Do you remember your debut at Sunset?
Stephane Portet: I arrived on May 26, 1993, the day of the Champions League final between Marseille and AC Milan! At the time, I was doing an activity that I liked moderately. The Sunset was in the throes of a crisis, there were staffing issues. My father realized he was being robbed. He asked me to give him a hand while he put the club back on track. He hadn’t understood that the day I set foot in there, it would be for life! By the time I arrived, there was a total shift change.

What were you doing before Sunset?
I have a business school background. I was a salesperson for a big company. And in my spare time, being a music lover, I was a DJ. On weekends, I would mix for private parties.

You arrived in a club founded by your father… Tell us about his early years.
Before the Sunset, the place was called the Diable Vert. We opened in 1976. At the beginning, it was a restaurant. It was the canteen of Coluche, the Théâtre du Splendid and many artists, you could dine there very late at night… Subsequently, it became a kind of American bar. In 1982, the Sunset opened. My father was never a music lover, he doesn’t have a jazz culture but he was always someone to listen to. If the Sunset has become a jazz club, it is thanks to the musicians who convinced him to transform the place for this purpose. They knocked on his door, and it was the right door! Therein lies the beautiful story. It is a place that the musicians have appropriated. Several years later, on Friday October 13, 2001, the Sunside was inaugurated.

What is the exact day of the inauguration of the Sunset in 1982?
It’s a very good question, we can’t find the exact day of the opening! Nobody was able to give us a precise date… As my father knew nothing about music, the first year, the programming was based on a collective of musicians who played non-stop. We didn’t send a schedule to the media. There was a group, Paname Fusion, in which people like Francis Lockwood, Didier Lockwood, Christian Vander, Paco Séry, Olivier Hutman played… Then my father hired programmers and things got organized.

When you took up the torch, did you quickly want to impose your vision, affix your signature?
It was immediate. With my somewhat commercial and marketing culture, I immediately remodeled the identity of the place. But in terms of programming, I let myself be carried away a lot by the musicians. Artists like the Belmondo brothers, Alain Jean-Marie, Simon Goubert, welcomed me with open arms. There was also Julien Lourau, Henri Texier, Bojan Z… I owe them my training in jazz, my culture in this music. When I arrived at the Sunset, the place was almost in liquidation, it had to be straightened out quickly. Also, I was very attentive to everything that was said, what was happening. The musicians formatted me a bit – in a good way. Every evening, they brought me new records that we listened to together. I quickly understood who were the artists who were trending at the time and I oriented myself towards them. We find them for the 40th anniversary program.

This initiation to jazz allowed you to sketch out desires and desires for a program oriented towards a French jazz scene…
Exactly. Sunset’s DNA is to defend French jazz, young French musicians. There are many of them in this country, and it is a mission for me to help them become a little bigger, more important. This is why we created the Sunside Trophies almost fifteen years ago. It is important to be able to discover the talents of tomorrow.

Do you have any memories that particularly marked you?
There are so many. So I’m just going to bring up this memory of Sting coming to the Sunside in 2008 to listen to a concert. The musicians saw him and invited him to join them. He ended up sitting on a tiny pouf at the foot of the stage, curled up like a little boy, singing the most incredible pieces of his repertoire… It’s the kind of magical moment when all of a sudden , you go beyond the framework of jazz. Sting is a humble gentleman, incredibly kind. When artists of this dimension come to your place, it means that your place has become an institution.

Which jazz artists would you dream of seeing perform in your home?
The great artists I would dream of seeing play at Sunset or Sunside are all dead! But if I had a dream today, I would like musicians like Herbie Hancock, Ahmad Jamal or Sonny Rollins to come and do a set at my place. I would have liked so much to see Prince coming to jam, like he did on the New Morning…

What can we wish you for the next few years?
Today, my dream is that this story can continue for a long time, because it’s a family saga. I am 54 years old and one day or another, I will hand over. I plan to leave in a few years. As my children are too young and all this is not necessarily their cup of tea, I chose my associates. I am training them in the Sunset culture!

Sunset 40th anniversary concert
Friday January 28, 2022, 8 p.m. at the Théâtre du Châtelet, in Paris
With Jean-Jacques Milteau, Sylvain Luc, Stéphane Belmondo, the trio of Jacky Terrasson, Yaron Herman, David El Malek, Étienne Mbappé, Rhoda Scott and her Lady All Stars… and surprises

> To listen : on France Musique, Stéphane Portet was the guest of Alex Dutilh’s Open Jazz program between December 27 and 31, with a theme per day around the artists programmed over time by the Sunset (stars, new talents, rising values, the French scene, the immediate future)
> To read : two pages of memories, sometimes comical, of Jean-Marc and Stéphane Portet in the December-January Jazz Magazine