“The Harlem Suite”, by Jacques Schwarz-Bart, all in perfectly controlled geographical drifts

2023-04-16 17:00:03

Jacques Schwarz-Bart, at the Olympia, in Paris, in January 2010. MARC CHESNEAU

Eleventh album by saxophonist Jacques Schwarz-Bart, born in 1962 in Les Abymes, Guadeloupe, The Harlem Suite is part of the perfect continuity of a work that merges with life: militant, spiritual, now installed at the heights of the great creators of jazz and Caribbean music. Extraordinary entourage: Victor Gould, Sullivan Fortner or Grégory Privat (piano), Marcus Gilmore, Terri Lyne Carrington, Arnaud Dolmen (drums), Matt Penman, Reggie Washington (bass), the very little variable geometry ensembles follow the idea of Harlem Suite.

Drawn in the shadow of confinement, the Harlem Suite retraces the career of the saxophonist from Guadeloupe, briefly parliamentary attaché – he graduated from Sciences Po –, quickly seconded to Berklee College of Music in Boston, where he is now a professor. Eighteen years in Harlem, on the “Spanish” side, partner of all that New York then had great musicians, nine years with the legendary trumpeter Roy Hargrove (1969-2018), Jacques Schwarz-Bart, grateful son of the writers André (Jew resistant to 12 years, Prix Goncourt in 1959 for The Last of the Just, Seuil) and Simone Schwarz-Bart – a radiant Guadeloupean with whom he publishes A dish of pork with green bananas (Seuil, 1967), dedicated to Aimé Césaire – to whom nothing was spared, continues his saga in music.

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From the dazzling sun salutation, Sun Salutation (solar tempo with the famous Moogerfooger pedal, for the funky note), up to the moving version of Dreaming of Freedom
(Stephanie McKay, vocals), via Central Park North et From Goré to Harlemthis perfectly controlled geographical drift in all its intensities manifests an exceptional maturity, a pleasure in playing (with others, with life, with meaning).

Former parliamentary attaché, he started the saxophone rather late, at the age of 24

The career of Jacques Schwarz-Bart is astonishing. He started the saxophone rather late, at 24: “I was very sporty, it was a question of gradually reconfiguring the synapses and the musculature, so as to adapt them to the game which supposes other imperatives. » After a year and a half of practice, in 1989, he listened to guitarist Garrison Fewell (1953-2015) at the Caveau de la Huchette in Paris. It is a singular choice, because Garrison Fewell, partner of John Tchicai, remains rather a “musician for musicians”, and no more jazz critic then sets foot in the Caveau de la Huchette, an illustrious place in the Parisian street of the same name, today brilliantly animated by Dany Doriz and his son.

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