Articles by Jean-Marc Gelin

Matthieu Donarier: Live Forms

by Jean-Marc Gelin
November 6, 2009

Matthieu Donarier presents his second album with his usual trio, following the widely acclaimed Optitopic in 2004. This new live album, recorded in Saint-Nazaire and Angers, once again showcases the strong intimacy between these three musicians, who have been playing together since their school years and their time at the CNSM. It is with them that Matthieu Donarier, known for his work in other ensembles (with Daniel Humair, Alban Darche, or Patrice Caratini), emerges as both a complete saxophonist and ...

Andy Emler: Crouch, Touch, Engage

by Jean-Marc Gelin
September 18, 2009

With Crouch, Touch, Engage, Andy Elmer is back. He is one of the most influential pianist/composers to have appeared on the French scene in the last 15 years, having explored all the possible links between jazz and rock. He has collaborated with some major jazz artists, including (Michel Portal, François Jeanneau, Trilok Gurtu and the late Woody Shaw), but it is his work with large orchestras--both at the beginning of his career in 1986 with the National Jazz Orchestra and, ...

Yaron Herman: An Urgent Need to Play

by Jean-Marc Gelin
August 26, 2009

Pianist Yaron Herman, an Israeli now living in Paris, is one of the most talented artists of the Parisian jazz musical scene. He was a promising basketball player on the Israeli national junior team when he was cut short by a knee injury. He then decided to take up playing the piano at age 16. His teacher, the renowned Opher Brayer--famous for his methods based on philosophy and mathematics--taught him the craving for self-knowledge and discovery.

At 19, Yaron left ...

Emile Parisien Quartet: Original Pimpant

by Jean-Marc Gelin
August 25, 2009

It's almost incongruous to write about Emile Parisien's Original Pimpant, considering the importance of its collective dimension. This is not only about the soprano saxophonist's quartet. Parisien--young prodigy, pupil and proof of the good reputation of France's Marciac jazz school--is not looking for individual recognition here. His is a distinctive approach that's about a collective construction of music; about bringing the purpose of music together, a bit like a theater company writing, staging and performing together.

Marc Ducret: Le sens de la marche

by Jean-Marc Gelin
August 21, 2009

From the word go, guitarist Marc Ducret's Le sens de la marche enters another world, an unsettled one full of surprise and anguish--one for which there can be no preparation. Vaguely reminiscent of Frank Zappa, King Crimson and Tim Berne, it's a musical hubbub of organized chaos--systematic in theory but brutal and brilliant in practice.

The references, however, are many and various. Ducret's jungle is wild and urbane; on “Tapage," the distant echoes of Duke Ellington's jungle can be heard, ...