February 2007, Paris: Pianist Guillaume de Chassy has just recorded his first solo piano album and he is performing an entirely solo set at the Archipel theater to celebrate its release. If he's nervous, it doesn't show; he jokes easily with the appreciative crowd, leading them through the by-ways of the musical journey that led him to this stage. The easy-going affability is deceptive; when he begins to play, de Chassy is all concentration.
AAJ's man in France, Jeff Dayton-Johnson caught up with de Chassy recently to discuss, amongst other things, his new record Piano Solo (Bee Jazz, 2007), the genius of the composers of the Great American--and the Great French--Songbooks, the enduring influence of Ravel in jazz, the struggle between the harmony and dissonance in the arts generally, and a kind of dialectical battle Thelonious Monk resolved in his “Ugly Beauty."
Check out Guillaume de Chassy: The Ugly and the Beautiful at AAJ today!
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