36) Portrait of a lady : Marie Noëlle, the vibes Fairy.

Marie Noëlle (to Joe Locke, to Ed Saindon, to David Friedman, to John Mark Piper she’s just “Marie”) lives in Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois, a small town to the south of Paris, France. There, “close to nature”, she enjoys a suburban lifestyle, raising her 7-year old boy Florian, performing the mundane tasks of ordinary life, or sitting in the grass, daisies in her hair, watching her husband Bruno vamp up la petite maison.

Every day she commutes to Paris. There she works as a buyer for a foundation for the blind. Her job is to order from firms around the world, specific products such as talking watches or white sticks, later to be dispatched to institutions for blind people, or sold to private customers. The white sticks, did you know, come from Canada or the Czech Republic, the talking watches from Asia or from the UK, other items are manufactured in Germany, not so many in China, unless perhaps they are all made in China. A good command of English is required for these business transactions held mostly via e-mail, more rarely by phone. Professionally, therefore, Marie Noëlle is a cyber-creature. Her job is a lot about sitting in front of a computer, and sending messages around the world.

Here’s the other side of the coin.

Once in a while, on a Saturday night, having safely tucked Florian in bed and entrusted him to his dad, Marie Noëlle escapes to a local rock joint. There she lets her hair down, grabs a mike, fronts the band and belts it out to them. No one can belt out a hard rock song like Marie. This pic from her Myspace page catches her in the act. Each time her pet drummer Zou aka “headbreaker”, who pumps a lot of iron, does a session with Marie Noëlle, he ends up beaten to a pulp, knackered, or as one of my young American friends used to say, “too pooped to poop”. “The broad is dangerous”, says Zou.

A wild artistic vein runs through the quiet Marie Noëlle. A long time ago, perhaps prompted to do so by her longtime friend Norbert Lucarain, one of the best vibes players in the country, she enrolled in a Conservatoire (municipal music school) for a vibraphone course. But she quit the lessons even before she’d gotten a proper start. Vibraphone lessons can be a drag, can’t they ? Strangely enough (but life is full of mystery), through this mere fleeting contact with the instrument, Marie Noëlle was awakened to a world of intense poetry. Was it the golden majesty of a Century Vibe, the silver finish of an M55, or more probably, the chrome bars of an old Bergerault that caused this, or perhaps the sensual feel of the rattan handles in her hand, or the roundness of the resonators, Marie warmed to the vibraphone immediately. She conceived for it a love which was of a mystical nature, because she sensed, as only women will, that she did not even have to bother learning to play that thing, that in fact if she did, this would only shatter the magic. She caught the vibes like a virus, worse than H5N1. She became addicted. It was the start of a love affair.

Then towards the turn of the century, Marie Noëlle discovered the vibe.net, the vibraphone forum. The vibe.net is open to master players as well as absolute beginners, sympathisers or enthusiasts. When I joined in 2000, in the “semi-beginners” league, I found that I had been preceded by Marie Noëlle, in the “enthusiasts” category. For sheer enthusiasm, you can’t beat Marie Noëlle. Her comments were all over the place, day after day. She knew everybody by name, and loved to just say hello and exchange a few words. As soon as she realized I was a fellow-countryman, she dropped me a message, and we’ve been in touch ever since. I stopped using the vibe.net a few years ago, when the administrators changed the design, and so I lost sight of Marie Noëlle for a time. But in May 2007, I started this blog, and after a couple of months I got a commentaire from Marie. Somehow she had managed to learn about Papamutt’s jazzitude, although he had tried his best to keep it a secret. This illustrates the acuteness of her perception. A guy starts a blog at the confines of the civilized world, under a borrowed name, and bingo ! in a matter of weeks Marie Noëlle is au fait with it ! 

Last August, it was again Marie Noëlle who tipped me off about Tony Miceli’s vibesworkshop, which had just been created.

The vibesworkshop takes the vibe.net concept one giant step further. The site is “by the cats, for the cats”. There’s a forum where, much in vibe.net style, you can vent your feelings and express your views, there’s a personal blog space, a “shout box” where you can blurt out, say hello to your friends etc. But first and foremost, you have access to a fast-growing mass of “resources” in the shape of video and audio lessons by the host Tony Miceli, at once a master player and a warm, relaxed teacher, and tips from the other faculty members who are none other than Joe Locke, John Mark Piper, Patricia Franceschy, Tjaco Oostjik, and now Ed Saindon ! Nico is around, as are world-class players like David Friedman, Mike Pinto and many other guys I’ve never heard about. The vibesworkshop is like Basin street, “the street where the élite always meet”. For someone like yours truly, who had to struggle alone for years to able to learn something, it’s a godsend.

Marie Noëlle was on the vibesworkshop almost from the very first, and her enthusiastic comments were soon blossoming, as they still are.

Marie connects to the vibesworkshop before leaving for work in the morning, and then again in her lunch hour (but I strongly suspect she gets up at night too). When she has typed in her user name, her password, and done her little bit of maths, lo and behold, an imaginary realm opens up before her eyes, peopled with her secret heroes, plus scores of lesser-known people. At that time the joint isn’t jumping, for it is night in America, and most of the guys are fast asleep. So she begins by scrutinizing the posts she missed from the day before, making sure not one of them escapes her attention.

She starts off by responding to those. She’s not afraid of getting a bit technical, discussing the execution of Bach partitas on the vibraphone (and adding a wonderful YouTube link), joining in the current debate about licks. Her comments, for what they are worth, show that she is hip to every aspect of playing. She knows about the Stevens grip. She knows the difference between the Burton grip and the Miceli stoned grip, she knows what particular grip Ed Saindon uses. Why ? Because she has watched every YouTube video that has a vibraphone player in it, seen every demo, read the literature on the subject. But her knowledge is not only bookish. She goes to live gigs. From her comment history, you realize she’s seen Joe Locke with the Milt Jackson memorial band, she’s seen Mike Mainieri. She has seen more than I have. Talk about being an aficionado !

Marie Noëlle’s favorite part of the site, though, is the shout box, which comes to life as her day wears on. Each familiar name that pops up under “online users” triggers a warm hello : “hello Paps !” , “hello Gavin”, “Hello J and J ! Both up already ? Wow!”. If it’s a new name, out goes a welcome-on-board message: “Welcome to Tom Beckham !”, “Christo Rafalidès on the Vibesworkshop. Wow ! Hello !” etc. Even the top people on the site, people with a really busy timetable, get their share of hellos, and they always take the trouble to reply. There are exchanges with Joe Locke, Tony Miceli, Ed Saindon,  John Mark Piper (who named a tune after young Florian), and it makes me think that they are not only the greatest musicians in the world, they are great people as well. “Marie is officially the hostess on this site. She’s the best” says Tony Miceli, the site administrator. I would say more. Considering that Marie Noëlle has been at this game for nearly ten years, wafting her cyber messages day after day, day in and day out, I think she rightly deserves to be called the Vibraphone Fairy, someone to watch over you...

Some will sneer and say : “but she can’t even play those darn vibes !”

But she don’t have to. Fairies don’t.