Vincent Peirani - Belle Époque '2014

Tracks list

	Tracklist
---------
01. Egyptian Fantasy
02. Temptation Rag
03. Song of Medina (Casbah)
04. Hysm
05. Le Cirque des Mirages
06. Place 75
07. Schubertauster
08. St. James Infimary
09. Dancers in Love

France’s new jazz stars join forces in a multifaceted chamber-jazz duo paying
tribute to the grand jazz and folk music history of their home country and
transporting it into here and now. 

Alongside and thanks to his ACT colleague Youn Sun Nah – who took him with her
on her tour of France and into the studio band for her album 'Same Girl'– the
33 year-old accordionist Vincent Peirani is undisputedly the French shooting
star of the last two years. The French Jazz Magazine named him Artist of the
Year 2013 for the wealth of variety, technical top-difficulties and percussive
inventiveness that the Nice-born Parisian enticed out of his accordions on his
so aptly entitled ACT debut album 'Thrill Box'. The jury of the Académie du
Jazz honoured him with the coveted 'Prix Django Reinhardt' award almost
simultaneously. 

No less in demand is Emilee Parisien, who is two years younger, comes from
Cahors and also lives in Paris. Like Peirani on the accordion, Parisien is seen
as the reinventer of the soprano saxophone and as its leading French
protagonist. Parisien started at the College de Jazz in Marciac at the gentle
age of eleven, and later played at the legendary festival there together with
greats the likes of Wynton Marsalis and Christian McBride. In 2009 he won three
major prizes: the 'Prix Frank Ténot' at the Les Victoires du Jazz, the 'Jazz
Primeur' awarded by the French Ministry of Culture and Foreign Affairs and the
prize from the festival organisation AFIJMA. In 2012, one year before Peirani,
he was awarded the 'Prix Django Reinhardt'. Most recently he caused a furore
mostly with his own quartet, which improvises freely and with a fascinating
homogeneity on material ranging from Wagner to hip-hop. 

But Peirani and Parisien are not only similar in terms of their success. They
found out that they also shared a passion for intoxicating sound cascades, an
open ear for exciting motifs across the entire range of styles, and a desire to
improvise, free of all technical constraints when they played together in the
quartet of drummer Daniel Humair. From that moment on it was only a matter of
time until they did a project together. That project is now here, in the form of
'Belle Époque', and it is at the same time Parisien's debut as an ACT artist. 

They originally planned the album to be an homage to Sidney Bechet, the Paris
resident and long uncontested master of the soprano saxophone. And it begins
with that man's 'Egyptian Fantasy', which the two transform into a lively echo
of the past: Peirani with a vibrant accordion counterpoint and Parisien with the
weightless melody. Bechet's 'Song Of The Medina (Casbah)' shifts between
ethereal meditation and shimmering, ecstatic dynamism, as does Henry Lodge's old
'Temptation Rag' before it, here as a new musical game of catch. They
collaborators then take it yet another step further with two compositions from
each of them and Duke Ellington's 'Dancers In Love' that closes off 'Belle
Èpoque'. 

In their own very personal way, they process the legacy of their great
predecessors. In Peirani the great French accordion tradition from Richard
Galliano to Jean-Louis Matinier can be seen – despite his unmistakable own
style of sound and technique. And one can also interpret Parisien's playing as a
genuflect to the other masters of the alto saxophone: Bechet, John Coltrane,
Steve Lacy and Wayne Shorter – and at the same time as an homage to the
inventor of the saxophone Adolphe Sax, who would have turned 200 this year. 

And so it is that 'Belle Èpoque' is intriguing, not only with its instrumental
innovation, but also thanks to its entirely harmonious merging with tradition.
And it is quite simply a dream how these two exceptional musicians harmonise
with each other and put themselves at the service of the other – be it
Peirani, who supports the saxophone melody on 'Hysm' like an organ, or inversely
Parisien, who uses the accordion double on 'Schubertauster', or both, in
transforming the venerable 'St. James Infirmary' to a joint sound-finding
experiment full of click and squeezing sounds. 

And so, ultimately, one can understand 'Belle Èpoque' in many ways: as an
invocation of the grand days in which the musical tradition began, to which
Peirani and Parisien belong. But it can also be considered a look forward at the
new, so promising époque that has just begun, and to which they belong even
more: that of jazz music that overcomes old borders to strive for freedom and
beauty. 



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