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Abrazo (vinyl)

Vincent Peirani & Emile Parisien

Abrazo (vinyl)

Format: LP 12inch
Label: ACT music
UPC: 0614427963116
Catnr: ACTLP 96311
Release date: 28 August 2020
Buy at PlatoMania
1 LP 12inch
Buy at PlatoMania
 
Label
ACT music
UPC
0614427963116
Catalogue number
ACTLP 96311
Release date
28 August 2020
Album
Artist(s)
Composer(s)
EN

About the album

Six years ago – an age! – these two musicians, who had met four years earlier as members of the Daniel Humair Quartet, brought out their first recording as a duo, the aptly named “Belle Époque”. Music evoking the carefree mood of the Roaring Twenties. “Belle Époque” was so delightfully and irresistibly French! With “Abrazo”, five hundred entrancing and jubilant concerts later, the evidence points to a firm friendship. And the term abrazo takes on ist full meaning: the hug we share with good friends and also, in tango, the partners’ “embrace”. The word is to be taken in both senses: two free-reed instruments, free to howl or to murmur; two dancers moving with ease across a ballroom floor. Vincent Peirani and Émile Parisien grant themselves total freedom to approach, come close, or move away, to act as mirrors or turn around, to become the follower or take the leader’s part – but on one condition: there has to be an element of surprise, for oneself and for one’s partner. Nevertheless, the game is more important than the rule. Tango is their chosen field. But as accomplished jazzmen, it is clear that these two young musicians are not going to keep to an orthodox approach!

Of course, the sculptural forms of pieces by Astor Piazzolla are included, but they are presented as a suite: a transition piece written by Vincent Peirani (Between T’s) comes between one of the Argentinian master’s most ostensibly jazz compositions, Fuga y mysterio (a movement from his 1968 opera María de Buenos Aires), and Deus Xango, originally recorded by Piazzolla with Gerry Mulligan and sublimated since then by Joachim Kühn with Larry Coryell and Philip Catherine (“Twin House”).

Émile Parisien and Vincent Peirani have of course let their imaginations run free and the spirit of tango permeates their own compositions. For Émile, a Memento giddy with lyricism, and for Vincent an expansive and dazzling Nouchka and a repetitive, haunting, violent, furious F.T. (alias Funky Tango).
They have also ferreted out A Bebernos Los Vientos, a piece by Tomás Gubitsch, with whom Vincent Peirani has often played. Vincent had already borrowed his Travesuras for “Tandem” with Michael Wollny; and, more unexpectedly, a rarity by Xavier Cugat, Temptation, unearthed thanks to Michel Portal who vaguely remembered a tango by Xavier Cugat – the “King of Rumba” – heard in a film in which Cugat and his orchestra were playing for a dance number. On a train, Michel hummed the tune to Vincent and Émile, but he could not remember the title of the piece or of the film. The persistence of their research was to be rewarded!

The wager for “Abrazo”, which is illuminated by exchanges that are sometimes tender, sometimes feverish, and often both at once, was to play with the whole palette of arrangements. With all the parameters of nuance, reciprocal positioning, lyrical or rhythmic bias, sparse or fully orchestral accompaniment. From the introduction of The Crave to the coda of Army Dreamers, the ten pieces included represent as many shifting landscapes, brought together to form a masterfully coherent whole.

Clearly, The Crave, by Jelly Roll Morton picks up the thread from the end of season 1 and carries on the story of “Belle Époque”. But here it is infused with a Peruvian festejo rhythm that would undoubtedly have delighted the composer. Similarly, ending with the bittersweet waltz by Kate Bush, Army Dreamers, opens the door to other dances, other songs, other emotions. It Takes Two to Tango… Louis Armstrong sang it, Lester Young and Oscar Peterson recorded it. It takes two, so why not Vincent Peirani and Émile Parisien! They make us dance till we are giddy!

Artist(s)

Vincent Peirani

'What this Nice-born Parisian coaxes out of the piano accordion is something the likes of which has never been heard before. You can tell it is a future legend who is playing here!' – Süddeutsche Zeitung. The French accordion player, singer and composer Vincent Peirani was born on 24.4.1980 in Nice. At the age of 11 he began playing the accordion, initially classical music. As a teenager he already won numerous international awards. At 16 he discovered jazz and soon took up the study of jazz in Paris. At the beginning he faced scepticism with his accordion and his classical training, but he quickly convinced the critics with an entirely new way of looking at the instrument, made a name for...
more
"What this Nice-born Parisian coaxes out of the piano accordion is something the likes of which has never been heard before. You can tell it is a future legend who is playing here!" – Süddeutsche Zeitung.
The French accordion player, singer and composer Vincent Peirani was born on 24.4.1980 in Nice. At the age of 11 he began playing the accordion, initially classical music. As a teenager he already won numerous international awards. At 16 he discovered jazz and soon took up the study of jazz in Paris. At the beginning he faced scepticism with his accordion and his classical training, but he quickly convinced the critics with an entirely new way of looking at the instrument, made a name for himself in France's jazz scene and was soon playing with the creme de la creme of French jazz, the likes of Michel Portal, Daniel Humair, Renaud Garcia Fons, Louis Sclavis and Vincent Courtois. Parallel to that he pursued many of his own projects, drawing from the widest range of genres – from jazz, chanson and world music through to classic and even heavy rock. Since 2011, Peirani has been playing regularly in the quartet of the Korean singer Youn Sun Nah, the most successful female jazz artist in France in recent years. Through this engagement he also made the acquaintance of Swedish guitarist Ulf Wakenius and ultimately the boss of the ACT label Siggi Loch. Peirani played on the Wakenius album "Vagabond" recorded in February 2012, also astonishing and enthralling live audiences everywhere. "Thrill Box" came out in May 2013 and was Vincent Peirani's first album as a leader – star-studded with pianist Michael Wollny, bassist Michel Benita and saxophonists Michel Portal and Émile Parisien. The album showcases the entire wealth of facets of Peirani's musical influences, and reveals more impressively than ever before what an intelligent and artful composer he is, and what a masterful and profoundly musical instrumentalist and storyteller.

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Emile Parisien

The French jazz scene has a vitality, an originality and a do-it- all and do-it-anyway mentality about it right now. It is French musicians who are blazing the new trails for contemporary European jazz. There is a wonderful open-mindedness towards all musical cultures, genres and tendencies; and yet French musicians also give off the sense of having a proper grounding in their own tradition. A musician who represents all of these tendencies ‘par excellence’ is saxophonist Emile Parisien. Born in Cahors in the wine-growing region of the Lot, he is a jazz visionary. He may have one foot in that ancient soil, but his gaze is firmly fixed on the future. The leading French newspaper Le Monde has called him...
more

The French jazz scene has a vitality, an originality and a do-it- all and do-it-anyway mentality about it right now. It is French musicians who are blazing the new trails for contemporary European jazz. There is a wonderful open-mindedness towards all musical cultures, genres and tendencies; and yet French musicians also give off the sense of having a proper grounding in their own tradition. A musician who represents all of these tendencies ‘par excellence’ is saxophonist Emile Parisien. Born in Cahors in the wine-growing region of the Lot, he is a jazz visionary. He may have one foot in that ancient soil, but his gaze is firmly fixed on the future. The leading French newspaper Le Monde has called him “the best new thing that has happened in European jazz for a long time,” while the Hamburg radio station NDR made the point of telling its listeners to give Parisien their “undivided attention.”

The reference points on Parisien’s personal musical map are very widely spread indeed. They range from the popular folk traditions of his homeland to the compositional rigour of contemporary classical music, and also to the abstraction of free jazz. And yet everything he does has a naturalness and authenticity about it. Rather than appearing pre-meditated or constrained, his music has a flow, he traverses genres with a remarkable fleetness of foot and an effortless inevitability.

What is it that makes the simple urgency of Parisien’s music quite so enjoyable? How does he manage to combine a provocative and anarchic streak with such a captivating sense of swing? Anyone who has seen and heard him on stage will know: it is because he lives his jazz with body and soul, because there is an authenticity and honesty inflecting every breath and every note.


less

Composer(s)

Vincent Peirani

'What this Nice-born Parisian coaxes out of the piano accordion is something the likes of which has never been heard before. You can tell it is a future legend who is playing here!' – Süddeutsche Zeitung. The French accordion player, singer and composer Vincent Peirani was born on 24.4.1980 in Nice. At the age of 11 he began playing the accordion, initially classical music. As a teenager he already won numerous international awards. At 16 he discovered jazz and soon took up the study of jazz in Paris. At the beginning he faced scepticism with his accordion and his classical training, but he quickly convinced the critics with an entirely new way of looking at the instrument, made a name for...
more
"What this Nice-born Parisian coaxes out of the piano accordion is something the likes of which has never been heard before. You can tell it is a future legend who is playing here!" – Süddeutsche Zeitung.
The French accordion player, singer and composer Vincent Peirani was born on 24.4.1980 in Nice. At the age of 11 he began playing the accordion, initially classical music. As a teenager he already won numerous international awards. At 16 he discovered jazz and soon took up the study of jazz in Paris. At the beginning he faced scepticism with his accordion and his classical training, but he quickly convinced the critics with an entirely new way of looking at the instrument, made a name for himself in France's jazz scene and was soon playing with the creme de la creme of French jazz, the likes of Michel Portal, Daniel Humair, Renaud Garcia Fons, Louis Sclavis and Vincent Courtois. Parallel to that he pursued many of his own projects, drawing from the widest range of genres – from jazz, chanson and world music through to classic and even heavy rock. Since 2011, Peirani has been playing regularly in the quartet of the Korean singer Youn Sun Nah, the most successful female jazz artist in France in recent years. Through this engagement he also made the acquaintance of Swedish guitarist Ulf Wakenius and ultimately the boss of the ACT label Siggi Loch. Peirani played on the Wakenius album "Vagabond" recorded in February 2012, also astonishing and enthralling live audiences everywhere. "Thrill Box" came out in May 2013 and was Vincent Peirani's first album as a leader – star-studded with pianist Michael Wollny, bassist Michel Benita and saxophonists Michel Portal and Émile Parisien. The album showcases the entire wealth of facets of Peirani's musical influences, and reveals more impressively than ever before what an intelligent and artful composer he is, and what a masterful and profoundly musical instrumentalist and storyteller.

less

Emile Parisien

The French jazz scene has a vitality, an originality and a do-it- all and do-it-anyway mentality about it right now. It is French musicians who are blazing the new trails for contemporary European jazz. There is a wonderful open-mindedness towards all musical cultures, genres and tendencies; and yet French musicians also give off the sense of having a proper grounding in their own tradition. A musician who represents all of these tendencies ‘par excellence’ is saxophonist Emile Parisien. Born in Cahors in the wine-growing region of the Lot, he is a jazz visionary. He may have one foot in that ancient soil, but his gaze is firmly fixed on the future. The leading French newspaper Le Monde has called him...
more

The French jazz scene has a vitality, an originality and a do-it- all and do-it-anyway mentality about it right now. It is French musicians who are blazing the new trails for contemporary European jazz. There is a wonderful open-mindedness towards all musical cultures, genres and tendencies; and yet French musicians also give off the sense of having a proper grounding in their own tradition. A musician who represents all of these tendencies ‘par excellence’ is saxophonist Emile Parisien. Born in Cahors in the wine-growing region of the Lot, he is a jazz visionary. He may have one foot in that ancient soil, but his gaze is firmly fixed on the future. The leading French newspaper Le Monde has called him “the best new thing that has happened in European jazz for a long time,” while the Hamburg radio station NDR made the point of telling its listeners to give Parisien their “undivided attention.”

The reference points on Parisien’s personal musical map are very widely spread indeed. They range from the popular folk traditions of his homeland to the compositional rigour of contemporary classical music, and also to the abstraction of free jazz. And yet everything he does has a naturalness and authenticity about it. Rather than appearing pre-meditated or constrained, his music has a flow, he traverses genres with a remarkable fleetness of foot and an effortless inevitability.

What is it that makes the simple urgency of Parisien’s music quite so enjoyable? How does he manage to combine a provocative and anarchic streak with such a captivating sense of swing? Anyone who has seen and heard him on stage will know: it is because he lives his jazz with body and soul, because there is an authenticity and honesty inflecting every breath and every note.


less

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