Articles

Daily articles carefully curated by the All About Jazz staff. Read our popular and future articles.

ALBUM REVIEW June 27, 2015

Jean-Michel Pilc, Marilyn Mazur, Mads Vinding: Composing

Read "Composing" reviewed by Chris Mosey

A magical mystery tour with two heavies of the avant garde and one good old reliable jazz bassist who fits in anywhere. To be more precise: American/Danish percussionist Marilyn Mazur, she of the frizzy hair and intense eyes; French pianist Jean-Michel Pilc, he of the goatee beard and dark, moody gaze; and Denmark's Mads Vinding, he whose eyes and beard (or lack of one) fit in anywhere. Lurking in the wings, are two muses. First there's Wayne ...

ALBUM REVIEW March 18, 2015

Jean-Michel Pilc: What Is This Thing Called?

By Budd Kopman

Pianist Jean-Michel Pilc has produced an extraordinary musical document with the release of What Is This Thing Called?. Superficially, the CD is a set of improvisations on Cole Porter's tune “What Is This Thing Called Love?," and it can be listened to in that manner. However, it is really an invitation into Pilc's sound world, his musical mind and his emotional being, and as such, it is very intimate. Accepting the invitation makes for a thrilling and intense ...

FILM REVIEW February 22, 2015

Profound Pianistic Presentations: Jazz Heaven DVDs from Jean-Michel Pilc and Enrico Pieranunzi

By Dan Bilawsky

There's more to music than the simple absorption and understanding of notes, rhythm, melody, and harmony; there's more to jazz than what naturally meets the eyes and ears; and, most daunting of all, there's more to learn than we can ever possibly imagine. But fear not, for there are resources out there to help aspiring musicians in their quest for a deeper understanding of music. Jazz Heaven has been tapping into some of the finest jazz player-educators ...

ALBUM REVIEW January 23, 2015

Jean-Michel Pilc: What Is This Thing Called?

By Mark Corroto

Jean-Michel Pilc's solo piano recording What Is This Thing Called? might have been titled “Thirty-one Conversations About One Thing." That 'one thing' being his 31 variations on Cole Porter's composition “What Is This Thing Called Love." Why record 31 versions of one song? Maybe ask yourself why Claude Monet created so many paintings of the same haystacks. Pilc, the Paris born, New York based pianist heads up an octet, a few trios, including one with Victor Lewis & ...

LIVE REVIEW June 8, 2011

Pilc-Moutin-Hoenig Trio: Washington, D.C. May 17, 2011

By Franz A. Matzner

Jean-Michel Pilc / Ari Hoenig / François Moutin Blues Alley Washington, D.C. May 17, 20011Tumultuous, unpredictable, vibrant with variegated rhythms and tempos, shimmering with torrents of sound and spiraling tendrils of color, the Pilc-Moutin-Hoenig Trio's recent performance at Blues Alley proceeded less like an unveiling and more like the exploding of a star--the event emitting a creative shock wave of force, overlapping forms, light, darkness, expanding and contracting space.The resonating artistic ...

ALBUM REVIEW October 3, 2010

Jean-Michel Pilc: True Story

By Raul d'Gama Rose

There are few pianists in any realm of music as expressive, and with such extraordinary touch and dynamics, as Jean-Michel Pilc. He is also so enormously inventive that he might be perhaps one of very, very few pianists to inhabit the same rarefied atmosphere as Bill Evans. And that is only half the story. To Pilc, the piano is not another instrument; it is an extension of the human voice. It whispers sensuously and provocatively, babbling on with excited chatter ...

ALBUM REVIEW July 7, 2010

Jean-Michel Pilc: True Story

By Karl Ackermann

Jean-Michel Pilc has yet to achieve a US prominence that compares to his fellow French jazz pianists, the late Michel Petrucciani and Algerian-born Martial Solal. While both of the latter musicians are frequently cited for their lightning-fast delivery, Pilc shares their agility as well as a finely honed ear for lyricism. But ultimately, Pilc is a different kind of player, interpreter and personality. He counters his own expressive side with a particular state of off-kilter playing that doesn't necessarily allow ...