Benoît Delbecq 4 - Gentle Ghosts (June 2021 Jazzdor)

The founding of Delbecq 4 traces back to November 2003, a few years after New York pianist Ethan Iverson had introduced Benoît Delbecq’s work to saxophonist Mark Turner. Turner joined the Delbecq Unit – a quintet which also featured Oene Van Geel, Mark Helias and Emile Biayenda – for its premiere at the 2003 Strasbourg Jazz d’Or Festival. The ensemble recorded Phonetics for the Vancouver-based label Songlines. This release affirmed Delbecq’s prowess as a leader and garnered such wide-ranging acclaim as the Choc de l'Année 2004 Jazz'man and a sprawling piece by celebrated New York Times critic Ben Rattlif.

In 2008, the young in-demand bassist John Hébert – New Yorker by way of Louisiana, and a fan of Delbecq's work – proposed the formation of a new trio with Delbecq and drummer Gerald Cleaver. Both artists had worked together as the final rhythm section for legendary pianist Andrew Hill. The John Hébert trio released acclaimed albums Spiritual Lover (2010) and Floodstage (2014) for Cleanfeed Records, touring across France and the United States.

The Delbecq 4 unites Turner and Delbecq, spotlighting a musical relationship marked by a compelling empathy that blossomed within Hébert’s trio. In 2016, the quartet premiered at Cornelia Street Café in New York City’s West Village, later recording Spots on Stripes (Cleanfeed, 2019) at Trading8s studio in New Jersey. The release received peer acknowledgment and international praise.

Delbecq 4 toured France, Switzerland and Belgium in spring as well as fall of 2019. Following their concert at the Philharmonie de Paris at Jazz à la Villette Festival, the collaborators recorded Gentle Ghosts in a single day at MidiLive studio near Paris; director Igor Juget captured the session on film. As he always does for his own projects, Delbecq served as composer for the entire recording which includes two of his older tunes, one of which he wrote for Turner in 2002.

A delicate use of electronics refines Delbecq’s search for new musical vibrations. Sitting at the piano with a midi foot pedal on the ground, Delbecq uses a real-time recording program of each instrumentalist’s microphone – sometimes of the entire quartet mix – a process he calls “post-radiophonic.” Consequently, the musicians as well as the listener dive into the revisiting of micro-musical miniatures after having heard them a brief moment earlier. Such ear attitude creates a mutation feel, as these miniatures are re-injected into the quartet's playing and overall sound, a playful process that crafts new states of music. This signature approach serves and expands Delbecq’s role of real-time “remixer,” one he established on Plug and Pray with Jozef Dumoulin and Ambitronix with Steve Argüelles, who previously assumed the same role on Delbecq’s albums Pursuit (Songlines, 2000) and Poolplayers (Songlines, 2007) with Arve Henriksen.

Delbecq has received support throughout his long-term, evolving sonic arcs from such crucial musicians as Mal Waldron, Steve Lacy, Paul Bley, Steve Coleman, György Ligeti or Pascal Dusapin, as well as from venues and festivals that are particularly championing of his sound and approach, such as Jazz d’Or Strasbourg, Europa Jazz Le Mans, the Vancouver International Jazz Festival, the Wroclaw Jazztopad and the Sud des Alpes in Geneva, among other international performance hubs. The Parisian pianist continues to work diligently toward his original musical visions. He is as curious about architecture as he is about the properties of imaginary numbers; he loves Thelonious Monk as much as the music of the Aka pygmies, Paul Bley as much as Domenico Scarlatti, Ornette Coleman as much as Claude Monet. He is a free and active musician who has traveled the international jazz scene since the early 90s.

Over the past three decades, Delbecq has built a fuss-free career, for he is unaffected by fashions and seductive strategies, his career being fostered by a vibrant momenta and the transmission of a musical language. His inspiration emerges from critical thinking and persistent research, and his expression praises collective, inventive forms and sounds in movement served by the exceptional voices of his fellow improvisers. All these elements invite his listeners into a kind of rhythmic and melodic mirage-like music – Gentle Ghosts – a music that questions our own history, our own memory. The sound of Benoît Delbecq is one that quietly influences the jazz of tomorrow. 

1. Anamorphoses 06:11

2. Chemin sur le Crest 06:15

3. Gentle Ghosts 05:43

4. Strange Loop 09:10

5. Stereo Fields 05:38

6. Le même jour 07:00

7. Havn 02:59

All compositions are by Benoît Delbecq (Sacem).

Recorded by Samuel Navel on September 3, 2019 at MidiLive, Villetaneuse, Paris.

Piano technician : Philippe Bailleul.

Mastered by Klaus Sheuermann at studio 4ohm, Berlin.

Produced and mixed by Benoit Delbecq.

Executive producer: Philippe Ochem for Jazzdor Series.

Photo: John Rogers

Graphic design: Helmo

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Benoît Delbecq - The Weight of Light (February 2021 Pyroclastic Records)

Paris-based artist Benoît Delbecq releases multimedia-inspired solo piano

album The Weight of Light

available on Pyroclastic Records

“Benoît Delbecq is one of the few true improvising piano geniuses of our times. He has

steadfastly created his own musical universe of sound, impeccable craft and beauty that is

wondrous, resonant and free in the best sense of the word.” — Fred Hersch, pianist and composer

“[Music of] exotic and mysterious qualities” — Bill Shoemaker, JazzTimes

“Delbecq likes to go beyond normal technique. He puts things on and between the piano strings to

make it a raw and sensitive percussion machine.”— Ben Ratliff, The New York Times

Internationally acclaimed pianist and composer Benoît Delbecq issues The Weight of Light on Pyroclastic Records, his first solo release in more than a decade. Following intentional exploration and years of extended research, confronting the smooth and the striated within his playing, the Paris-based artist now offers open-eared listeners new, deeply personal connections to the music inspired by movementcentric perspectives on shadow and light.

Within trancelike chambers and subtle interluding halls, Delbecq conjures the mysterious ecstasy of transitional imagery. Nine tracks of original music pivot across contemplative brightness and ethereal darkness. Serving spontaneity, each gesture reflects a translation of feeling and invites listeners to engage their own emotional responses to the music, as they listen in real time.

Ever curious about visual representation of music, Delbecq has been enhancing versions of his own graphic notation for years. But as he composed music for The Weight of Light, he began recognizing how hanging mobiles wield influence over his relationship to music and, more broadly, artistic expression.

“That was totally unconscious,” he says. As a child, he’d regard a mobile casting shadows in his parents’ bedroom for minutes at a time. “The idea likely came from way back, but who can say?”

From that buried memory, Delbecq began drawing the image that would become his album cover for The Weight of Light. “I drew the record cover pretty fast, but the shadow took me days,” he says. “I wanted to render something mysterious about the shadow of this mobile.” That unnamed mystery rests at the consciousness of The Weight of Light and includes both physical and figurative interpretations.

Some 35 years ago, Delbecq’s physicist brother centered his Ph.D. around proving that light has a mass. At the time, the idea fascinated Delbecq. “Hardly any people know that light has a mass,” he says. For the album, he took poetic license to change “mass” to “weight,” intent on exploring what that concept might sound like on a piano.

Inspired by what he calls “real presences” within his artistry, Delbecq considers features of architecture when composing new music, including how different structures interact with light. One partly sunny morning, he found himself inside the Notre-Dame de Ronchamp chapel by Le Corbusier, observing the light coming through the stained glass windows. “A cloud passing by, revealing the sun inside the chapel, of course will change your relationship with the space you’re in,” he says. His Poe-like appraisal of light influencing emotional response to physical surroundings persists across The Weight of Light. “In that sense, that’s also weight of the light,” he says.

Delbecq regards piano as a vessel for expansion. His expert manipulation of the instrument presents patterns, pauses and un-patterns as on “Pair et Impair,” as well as sonic illusions such as left-hand “loops” on “Anamorphoses” and “The Loop of Chicago” that take shape and reshape throughout the compositions. Providing plenty of opportunity for listeners to experience starkness of time and space, Delbecq engages openness on “Au Fil de la Parole” and “Dripping Stones” the latter beginning as a cluster of tightly packed colors, primed for expansion. And he concludes in notes of dark and doleful lushness tinged with inquiry on “Broken World.”

For these renderings, Delbecq turns to perhaps the most prominent textural characteristic of his sound: prepared piano. And his love for those sounds emerged from his fascination for drummers he heard live, namely Kenny Clarke, Paul Motian, and Ed Blackwell. Textural possibilities serve his unique compositional development, particularly for The Weight of Light. “When I’m composing, it’s exactly like I’m looking at inventing the future shape of an object,” he says, “so I look at it from different places. It’s like a 3-D way of conceiving things that has to do with optical phenomena. If I move around it, it will reveal shapes that are hidden at other angles.”

Benoît Delbecq is a multi-awarded Parisian pianist and composer, engaging new textures and pulses on prepared piano. His musical force weaves compelling works inspired by varied sources including mathematics, poetry and architecture. Delbecq's works have received acclaim from legendary musicians such as Mal Waldron, Steve Lacy and György Ligeti, as well as from a long list of critics, peers and festivals curators. He studied improvised music with Alan Silva, founder of the Institute for Artistic and Cultural Perception in Paris, later receiving mentorship from Waldron. At the Banff Centre, Delbecq studied with Steve Coleman, Dave Holland and Muhal Richard Abrams, among other masters. He also studied composition and music analysis with Solange Ancona. Besides being a performer, composer and producer, Delbecq served as founder of the Hask Collective Paris (1992-2004) and is presently a founding member of Bureau de Son Paris (2008) and the dStream label.

 

1. The Loop of Chicago 08:00

2. Dripping Stones 03:07

3. Family Trees 04:15

4. Chemin sur le Crest 03:21

5. Au Fil de la Parole 02:25

6. Anamorphoses 07:37

7. Havn en Havre 05:30

8. Pair et Impair 09:47

9. Broken World 04:51

Benoît Delbecq - piano

In memoriam Ken Pickering and Philippe Bailleul

Recorded by Juien Bassères

Mixed by Benoît Delbecq at Bureau de Son Paris

Mastered by Klaus Scheuermann at 4ohm, Berlin

Piano Technician: Bastien Herbin

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Benoît Delbecq / Jorrit Dijkstra / John Hollenbeck - Linger (DRIFF RECORDS October 1, 2018)

Dijkstra and Hollenbeck have been collaborating as a duo since the mid-nineties. Recorded as a follow-up on their well-received album Sequence (Trytone Records, 2005), Linger adds French prepared piano master Benoît Delbecq to the mix. Dijkstra and Delbecq met at the Banff Jazz Workshop in 1990 and have collaborated occasionally over the years. As on Sequence, the same process of instant composition was used in the studio: to establish some textures and atmospheres first, then record a few takes per texture, and choose the best takes afterwards without further editing. The titles of the ten tracks all reflect movement of some sort, represented by the multi-layered rhythms, the dense microtonal textures, and the lyrical, lingering melodic interactions of Dijkstra and Delbecq.

Delbecq’s mumbling bass synth lines, Dijkstra’s analog synth and processed saxophone sounds, and Hollenbeck’s hard-hitting grooves and almost electronic-sounding percussions give the album a unique sound that defies categories.

Benoît Delbecq - prepared piano, bass synth

Jorrit Dijkstra - alto saxophone, lyricon, analog electronics

John Hollenbeck – drums, percussion

1. Place 05:23

2. Relay 06:21

3. Linger 04:08

4. Stir 03:46

5. Hold 08:54

6. Stalk 05:37

7. Push 04:19

8. Poke 03:50

9. Dwell 04:58

10. Edge 04:57

All improvisations by Benoît Delbecq (SACEM), Jorrit Dijkstra (Buma/Stemra) and John Hollenbeck (ASCAP/GEMA).

Recorded by Eric Kilburn at Wellspring Studio, Acton MA on January 24, 2016. Mixed by Benoît Delbecq and Steve Argüelles at PlushSpace, Paris. Mastered by Myles Boisen at Headless Buddha Mastering Lab, Oakland CA. Cover art by Raoul van der Weide. Design by Hidde Dijkstra.

Photography by Valérie Archeno.

The Recyclers - Davout (dStream 2018)

The idea of the ‘piano trio’ perhaps suggests centrality for the pianist, but at least since the ground-breaking work of Bill Evans, Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian this is not so – in such trios at their best, the piano, bass and drums are equal points of a triangle, three voices in ‘trialogue’. There is a radical spirit inherent in The Recyclers’ approach that celebrates the tradition of the piano trio, but sidesteps and offers inventive alternatives to it, setting up situations and ideas that push and pull it in new directions, recognising that music can be about ‘playing’ in every sense of the word.

The Recyclers formed in Paris in 1992, with Benoît Delbecq on piano, Steve Argüelles on drums and percussion, originally alongside the guitarist Noël Akchoté, who was replaced in 1999 by ‘Disco’ Christophe Minck on bass. On this album Minck enriches the sound by supplementing his bass guitar playing with the addition of moog, ngoni and harp. (The atmospheric saxophone of Antonin Tri Hoang adds further colour on one track too.) Anchored in a primarily acoustic sound world, the trio’s deft use of electronic effects provides an unobtrusive lift, countering, highlighting or elongating the natural acoustics of their instruments, or sometimes emphasising the open spaces of the music. 

The piano trio constitutes a contained space, but one within which Delbecq, Minck and Argüelles can still be relatively boundless in form and format. Like the best artists in any creative form, they carve out new pathways through traditional forms, re-making and multiplying their rhythmic relationship to them; deflecting, unravelling and rebuilding them melodically as they go. Their mutual understanding is based on generosity and alert listening so that their intertwined lines undulate like Möbius strips in ever-changing shadings. Their music possesses a rhythmic presence and melodic invention that eludes categorisation, as well as an undercurrent of pleasurable tension through the trio’s ability to change direction at any given moment.

We often speak of ‘making’ music, and this trio reveal how physical that act of making is. They confront us with their bodily reality through their interaction with their instruments and our own bodily reality as we engage with and respond to their music. The process of its construction is audible in its melodic flow, in the interruption to that flow by rhythmic twists and turns, and in the interlocking warp and weft of its textures. Defined by incessant motion, for its makers and its listeners, this music fires the imagination, takes you off on tangents, but keeps your (dancing) feet on the ground. It makes listening and hearing feel palpably fresh and vital. 

After repeated listening to this album I have found myself each time able to hear different sounds, rhythms, tones, or thoughts. It’s not too fanciful to think that there are ghosts in this music too – it was recorded in the legendary (and sadly recently closed) Studio Davout. Visual imagery of all kinds is conjured by these sounds, something that becomes more resonant with the knowledge that Studio Davout was housed in a former Paris cinema. And the legendary artists who recorded at the studios since their creation in 1965 range from Michel Legrand to Karlheinz Stockhausen, from Serge Gainsbourg to Archie Shepp, Nico to Keith Jarrett, Nina Simone and Abbey Lincoln to The Skatalites, Dexter Gordon to Yo-Yo Ma, and from Talking Heads to Herbie Hancock. Recorded in such a mythic location, and paying tribute to it in the album’s title, the eclectic influences of this genre-defying music might have seeped through the studio walls as well as being ingrained in The Recyclers’ consciousness. 

Derek Horton

1. Whammy 05:53

2. Nouvettes 06:14

3. Caboose 08:20

4. Kitchen 02:17

5. Minaret 10:21

6. +X 08:23

Steve Argüelles - drums, percussion

Benoît Delbecq - piano

Christophe `Disco’ Minck - bass, moog, ngoni, harp

(#6 Antonin Tri-Hoang - tenor saxophone)

All compositions by Steve Argüelles

Recorded at Davout studios in Paris, France

Recorded by students of the ESIS `école supérieur de l’image et du son’ Matthieu Lefevre & Louis Roueche Rossi mentored by Samuel Navel

Mixed and edited by Steve Argüelles at Plushspace

Mastered by Philippe Teissier du Cros

Session photos by Igor Juget

Production déléguée pour dStream/ Bureau de Son - Charlène Pré

Bureau de son est soutenu par la DRAC île de france - Ministère de la culture

The Recyclers - Studio Davout - Teaser from Igor Juget on Vimeo.

Benoît Delbecq - AJMiLIVE #17 (AJMILIVE 2017)

Multi award-winning Parisian pianist, composer and producer Benoit Delbecq figures among the prominent innovators of the international contemporary jazz scene who have build their own singular language in music. He has brought the soul of jazz to John Cage's prepared piano, when The New York Times depicts him as "an original and unconventional pianist who expertly invents a serene music".

1. Circles & Calligrams 11:29

2. Meanwhile (to Mal Waldron) 08:17

3. Ando 09:42

4. Broken World 06:15

5. Bio Beat 11:03

6. Le même jour (to Lucas & Pol) 07:26

7. Yompa (to Guillaume Orti) 10:15

8. Mu-Turn 06:07

Benoit Delbecq, piano

Illegal Crowns - Illegal Crowns (ROGUEART 2016)

We treasure the long-time collaborators who share the same commitment to the creative journey, and we thrill at meeting new partners who converse with the same hybridized and willfully corrupted musical vocabulary. A cooperative project like Illegal Crowns celebrates all of the above.

Illegal Crowns: a group both old and new, music accessible and experimental, a name revolutionary and royal. Four individuals and one ensemble, in the kind of harmony that needs no resolution. Taylor Ho Bynum, excerpt from the liner notes

01. Colle & Acrylique 6:21

02. Thoby’s Sister 6:29

03. Illegal Crown 9:03

04. Holograms 4:09

05. Solar Mail 7:18

06. Wry Tulips 14:44

Mary Halvorson: guitar

Tomas Fujiwara: drums

Benoît Delbecq: piano, prepared piano

Taylor Ho Bynum: cornet, flugelhorn