Raphaël Imbert - Music Is My Hope (JAZZ VILLAGE PIAS 2018)

Music Is My Hope, le nouvel album de Raphaël Imbert chez Jazz Village, est un combat d’espérance. Après Music Is My Home en 2016, le saxophoniste et compositeur livre ici un témoignage intime tout autant qu’une flamboyante invitation au partage.

Entre actualité planétaire et vécu intime, c’est bien d’espoir dont il est question ici. À une époque où il semble tant manquer, il se dévoile partout dans ce disque : dans le prêche habité de Marion Rampal de Show Boat To Delphi, dans l’introspection poétique d’Aurore Imbert sur Lady On Earth, dans un chant populaire provençal radicalement revisité par la voix de Manu Barthélémy et bien sûr un peu partout dans les volutes de saxophone de Raphaël Imbert.

Music Is My Hope nous emmène à cet endroit où la musique est essentielle et brûlante, et réunit dans un même geste la protestation, la prière, l’activisme, l’amour, le sacré et le profane. Une musique qui ravive les flammes de nos espérances amoureuses, politiques, universelles ou personnelles. Une musique qui peut, par sa force salvatrice, nous remettre en mouvement et nous rassembler.

Au-delà du blues des origines, Raphaël Imbert invoque ici les appels du spiritual, les revendications de la soul et des protest songs, les introspections du folk et des chants populaires qui font œuvre commune et collective. En retrouvant ses sources, la musique réveille la fraternité, la contestation, l’affirmation, le désir et l’allégresse.

L’album s’ouvre sur la voix de Paul Robeson lisant le dernier monologue d’Othello de Shakespeare. Destin hors-norme animé par une conscience universelle et humaniste, Paul Robeson représente d’emblée notre quête d’espoir. Un fil conducteur de Music Is My Hope que l’on retrouve dans Peat Bog Soldiers chant antifasciste, dans Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel un spiritual de l’émancipation, dans le si profond Blue Prelude.

1 Peat Bog Soldiers 7:31

2 A Letter to the Muse 3:45

3 Blue Prelude 8:11

4 Lady on Earth 4:34

5 Didn't My Lord Deliver Daniel 2:20

6 Turn! Turn! Turn! 6:18

7 Vaqui Lo Polit Mes De Mai 5:46

8 Eastern Queen 5:04

9 Here's a Song 5:07

10 The Circle Game 8:01

11 Show Boat to Delphi 6:11

12 Play Your Cards Right 2:55

13 Shenandoah 5:12

14 Christ Iag In Todesbanden (Bonus Track) 1:52

Raphaël Imbert : saxophones, clarinette basse

Pierre-François Blanchard : claviers

Thomas Weirich : guitares

Pierre Durand : guitares

Jean-Luc Difraya : batterie

Aurore Imbert : chant

Marion Rampal : chant

guests: 

Manu Barthelemy : chant

Big Ron Hunter : chant

Luca Lo Bianco - Ear Catcher (FITZCARRALDO RECORDS 2018)

The focus that animates the music of the band is the continuous expressive exploration in a creative synthesis with no aesthetic limitations, the result of a natural superposition of musical languages. The repertoire is mainly based on original compositions written by the leader, but there is also space for the music of Suzanne Vega (Language) or Massive Attack (Tear Drop), in a daring alchemy of sound enlivened by contrasts of timbre and articulated arrangements focused on choral execution.

Migrants abandon a place which has become inhospitable, nomads invent the lands in which they move and learn new languages, superimposing them with memories of a land that they have never had. The nomad, for what he has seen or heard, could go back home with red eyes or perforated ear drums. He could forget. He could even escape. Or else, he could look at all the spaces and extensions and transform them into intentions. Nomad music is like this: it transforms landscapes into escape routes, into new tangled streets, into a weapon. Great geographical adventures are escape routes, from which new forms of music are born. With long trips, Luca Lo Bianco travelled unpredictable paths, he transformed the intensity of the world into his own way of speaking.

Far from definitions, this music has spoken thousands of languages, it has been contaminated, it has lain traps for the open spaces of the city it portrays, in which deserts and urban steppe grow, in which the sound takes on the colour of the streets. He invented nomadism as an answer. Like the necessity to lose control of your own language to put something with an unpredictable life into the world, but in order to follow this route we need to know how to listen and capture the vibrations of the air with our ears.

1. Girl with a red bike 03:31

2. Tear drop 06:35

3. Overnight 04:46

4. They are still watching us 04:05

5. Oop 07:13

6. Language 04:00

7. Zulu dream 05:29

8. Bar code 07:38

9. Afternoon...a kind of 04:08

Francesco Guaiana - electric guitar

Gaspare Palazzolo - soprano, tenor sax, clarinet

Marco Di Fonte - cello

Luca Lo Bianco - acoustic & electric bass

Fabrizio Giambanco - drums

guest: 

Fabio Rizzo - lapsteel guitar

All compositions by Luca Lo Bianco except:

N.2 by Del Naja, Marshall, Volles, Fraser

N.6 by Susanne Vega

N.8 by F. Guaiana

N.9 by J. Giuffre/L. Lo Bianco

Recorded at Music Box Studio in Palermo, April 2008

Sound engineer Enzo Puccio

Mixed at Lab Music Recording Studio by Antonio Zarcone and Luca Lo Bianco

Published by Fitzcarraldo Records

Luca Lo Bianco - La Scomparsa di Majorana (FITZCARRALDO RECORDS 2018)

The story told in this CD was freely inspired by the book The mystery of Majorana by Leonardo Sciascia and it embraces the intriguing thesis advanced by the writer about the disappearance of the great physicist, Ettore Majorana. The story develops during a period of great scientific enthusiasm and it proved to be topical for its complexity. As a result Majorana goes down in history as a brave and brilliant man who probably decided to disappear, being face to face with the insight of the disastrous potential of nuclear research and laying down the details of his plan with extreme efficacy. Sciascia and Majorana both express a way of being Sicilian, two complex, sincere and extremely severe characters, the former for his painstaking research of another possible truth the latter for his rejection of a science he carried as a secret in his inner being.

Two men who accept the consequences of their actions with an exemplary strength imbued with an inescapable awareness, after choosing as a leading principle of their behaviour the rejection of an imposed reality. The driving idea for me to conceive this project, which has also become a performance, is one of putting into place a real synergy between music and text, making the sound an integral part of the narration. The music then is no longer in the background but it is the foundation for the whole story to take place. Therefore it provides not only the supporting layer which integrates the text in its descriptive and evocative function (inspiring sceneries, images, places) but it becomes also an instrument to convey the uniqueness of a story full of a spirituality I have decided to describe with the language of sounds.

1. Intro 00:10

2. Un'andatura quasi incerta 07:14

3. I ragazzi di Via Panisperna 02:22

4. Inganni e ritardi 05:09

5. Lipsia 10/1/1933 08:41

6. Thanatos 09:01

7. Senso comune 08:00

8. La disintegrzione di un atomo radioattivo 03:31

9. Per non piu' tre giorni 06:48

10. Alfonsina y el mar 04:38

LA SCOMPARSA DI MAJORANA'

Featuring:

Claudio Gioè, Rosario Tedesco (actors)

Ferenc Nemeth, Mimmo Cafiero, Massimo D'Aleo, Fabrizio Giambanco (drums)

Gianni Gebbia, Gaspare Palazzolo, Orazio Maugeri (sax)

Giorgia Meli (voice)

Francesco Guaiana (guitar)

Mauro Schiavone (piano)

Luca Lo Bianco (acoustic & electric bass, electronics)

All compositions by: Luca Lo Bianco, except N°10 by Ramirez/ Luna

Recorded on February 2005

Published by Silta Records

Piano Süd Trio - Hypothesis (FITZCARRALDO RECORDS 2018)

1. Gotcha (A. Messina) 06:54

2. Per non piu' di tre giorni (L. Lo Bianco) 07:47

3. Damn Blues (A. Messina) 04:56

4. Trick or treat (A. Messina) 04:48

5. La mia parte nopea (S. Borzacchiello) 05:13

6. Hypothesis (A. Messina) 05:13

7. Dancing in a dream (A. Messina) 07:34

8. Siciliana (A. Messina) 05:55

9. Blue in green (M. Davis) 05:10

All compositions arranged by Piano Süd Trio

Antonello Messina - piano

Luca Lo Bianco - acoustic bass

Silvano Borzacchiello - drums

Altomaria - Disco Infermo (FITZCARRALDO RECORDS 2018)

Altomaria is an historical sicilian-based band active since 2000 a.d. who reunites some of the best Jazz players from the three corners of Sicily island. Featuring the obliquous bassist Luca Lo Bianco and sax veteran Gianni Gebbia, from Palermo, master of rhytms Francesco Cusa from Catania and the trombone wizard Tony Cattano from Syracuse area. 

Serious fun. Steve colemanish plus minguslike and funkadelics grooves in a solid musical 'Cosa Nostra' band.

1. Malo Inno 08:22

2. S.C. 08:09

3. Bluemingus 05:01

4. Zero in geometria 05:05

5. Bowin' in the wind 02:47

6. You go! I go? 07:29

7. Taranzurka 03:16

8. Disco Infermo 03:57

G i a n n i  G e b b i a ✪ alto Saxophone

T o n y  C a t t a n o ✾ trombone

L u c a  L o B i a n c o ⚒︎ acoustic bass

F r a n c e s c o  C u s a ⚧ drums

All compositions by Altomaria except n.4 by G. Gebbia

Recorded live at Lab Music Studio - Palermo 2003

Sound engineer Antonio Zarcone

Produced by Luca Lo Bianco and Gianni Gebbia

Graphic design Luca Lo Bianco

Samples on N.4 and N.5 Giovanni Verga

Published by Fitzcarraldo Records in colabeling with Objet-a

Jacky Molard Quartet - Mycelium (INNACOR RECORDS 2018)

« Dans la Grande Boutique de Langonnet (Morbihan), leur Friche Articole, Jacky Molard (violon) et Hélène Labarrière (contrebasse) ainsi que leurs amis Janick Martin (accordéon) et Yannick Jory (saxophones alto et soprano) assaisonnent le jazz aux herbes de Bretagne sans oublier de le pimenter de quelques épices venues d’ailleurs, des rivages de l’Afrique aux portes de l’Orient.

Du fait maison aux saveurs incomparables avec un cœur gros comme ça... ». Ainsi débutait ma chronique du concert de ce quartet incomparable lors de l’Atlantique Jazz Festival de Brest en octobre 2017. On attendait alors la parution du disque que voici avec une belle bordée d’invités toujours prêts à embarquer : Christophe Marguet avec fûts et cymbales, François Corneloup et son baryton, Serge Teyssot-Gay pour mettre le feu avec sa guitare électrisée, Jean-Michel Veillon avec sa flûte d’autrefois et même l’incomparable conteur percupoétique qu’est Albert Marcœur. Du jazz issu de la diversité comme on le cuisine en Armorique chez d’irréductibles militants de la musique vivante, insolite, impertinente et donc, indispensable !

01. Bolom

02. Adjihina

03. Jabiru

04. Triangle

05. Mycelium

06. An Nouveau

07. Précautions d’usage

Jacky Molard : violon, guitare sur 4

Yannick Jory : saxophones alto et soprano

Jannick Martin : accordéon diatonique

Hélène Labarrière : contrebasse

+

François Corneloup : saxophone baryton (4, 6)

Christophe Marguet : batterie (3, 4)

Albert Marcœur : voix, percussions (4, 7)

Serge Teyssot-Gay : guitare électrique (2, 4)

Jean-Michel Veillon : flûte traversière en bois (1, 4)

INNACOR RECORDS

Gildas Scouarnec - Live at Radio France (FRESH SOUND RECORDS 2018) 2-CD

You can almost hear their restlessness: listen the two saxophonists enter the arena, Peter King on alto, Jean Toussaint on tenor. Playfully, they try to reach each other’s registry—the alto scraping for its lower notes while the tenor goes through the higher octaves. And in two of the tunes they have the young Sylvain Beuf join in for the games. At the piano? Alain Jean-Marie, immediately recognizable by his unrivaled touch and swing, by the elegance without flourishes that he has always represented. The many colors of Tony Rabeson on drums: revel in his solo on Minor Mood. And in some tunes George Brown replaces him with his bold, unpredictable swing, unrivaled in the history of Parisian jazz! And behind this beautiful scene Gildas Souarnec, composer and bassist. Not all the tunes are his —for example Shorter, composed by Peter King, who quotes Nefertiti with admiration and a hint of mischief—but you can hear the leader’s hand in most of them: his enthusiastic proposals, the interplay between the voices of the saxophones, the melodic charm of Valse pour Margot…

And through all of it, a beautiful bass, natural, fair and full bodied, unfiltered by amplification, delivering the sound of the fingers and the string—a real taste of the authentic without added colorings and preservatives, as fresh today as the day it was made!

CD 1

01. Mr. Silver

02. Modjo

03. Minor Mood

04. U.Turn

CD 2

01. Shorter

02. First Kick

03. 93/94

04. Valse pour Margot

05. Blues for Sylvain

All tracks composed by Gildas Scouarnec, except CD1 #1 by Peter King

Gildas Scouarnec (b)

Peter King (as)

Jean Toussaint (ts)

Alain Jean Marie (p)

Tony Rabeson (d)

On CD 1, tracks #1 & 4: Sylvain Beuf (ts), Georges Brown (d)

Recorded at La Maison de Radio France, Paris, June 11, 1996 (CD1 #1 & 4: Broadcast “Jazz Vivant,”) & February 11, 1994 (Broadcast “Transcontinentales”)

Produced for CD release by Jordi Pujol

Stereo · 24-Bit Digitally Remastered