music
twelve o’clock, April 27, 2021 – 13:35
In the album “Majakka” the French pianist proposes a chamber jazz written and played with intelligence, which is nourished by ethnic suggestions and refined timbral combinations.
of Fabrizio Versienti
There has never been a great circulation of record material between Italy and France, and that’s a shame. The exploits of this or that Italian singer-songwriter in France or that transalpine jazzman in Italy are entirely episodic. In contrast to the trend, the La Buissonne label, founded by the sound engineer and producer Gérard de Haro, already owner of the recording studio of the same name in Pernes les Fontaines, has now landed with us (with the distribution of a giant in the sector such as Ducale). Haro moves between contemporary music and jazz, in a very open and European sense. Among the latest releases, an authentic jewel is «Lighthouse” by transalpine pianist (but born in Tangier, Morocco) Jean-Marie Machado, one of the best kept secrets of French jazz.
The quartet and the pieces
In “Lighthouse»We find at work a quartet completed by the cello by Vincent Segal, saxophones and flutes by Jean-Charles Richard, the zarb and other ethnic percussions by the Franco-Iranian Keyvan Chemirani. Already the composition of the group ensures a remarkable timbre originality, well enhanced by the musical writing of Machado: the incipit of «Ball»Is dazzling, with its soft melodic swirls that are repeated urgently, while at the end Machado’s piano,” prepared “with some devilry in the tailpiece, sounds metallic like a cimbalom of the Roma tradition. In “Gallop impulseOn the other hand, the pizzicato of the cello offers an effective basis for the very light flights of the flute. “The sea of rains “ is a delightful single-story curtain, while “The eyes of Tangati” it has Indian flavors. All this to speak of a music as free as air, which knows no boundaries but which combines different elements with rare sensitivity and elegance.
April 27, 2021 | 13:35
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