“I knew who I wanted to work with and that guided me when I was trying to set up a group with a pleasant sound,” said the French accordionist Vincent Peirani in 2015, shortly after the release of his key album Living Being. At that time he had already completed several interesting acoustic projects including an album with the saxophonist Emil Parisien and he has continued in this style. In 2016 he brought out an enjoyable CD of duets with the pianist Michael Wollny and not long ago he worked with the pianist Stefano Bollani and the Berlin Philharmonic on the album Mediterraneo, inspired by classical music. The Living Being project is however of a completely different character, embodying the accordionist’s conception of electric music on the borders between jazz, rock and other genres. And it was with this programme that Peirani and his group came to Brno’s Husa na provázku (Goose on a String) theatre.
The quintet revealed immediately in the first piece the boundaries within which they would be performing. Peirani swapped between the accordion (seated) and harmonica (standing), the saxophonist Parisien put so much energy into his playing that he danced, walked, knelt, fought … And despite the calm beginning the group produced several attention-worthy moments including a long solo from the keyboard player Tony Paeleman (Fender Rhodes). Even more epic - from apparent chaos to a clear conclusion - was the second piece about a killer clown Le clown tueur de la fête foraine. What the band missed out on saying in the first two numbers they shouted in an original fusion of two famous songs by the British group – Kashmir To Heaven. In this the lyrical accordionist with his band dared to venture into the waters of hard rock and made it sound light and unforced. This sign of the transition from natural melodic passages with Peirani’s accordion (and also voice as a musical instrument) to more rhythmic and rock passages was to carry through into the rest of the evening, which was far from being monotonous or dull. Otherwise aside from Led Zeppelin Peirani’s electric group also offered the audience an excerpt from Purcell’s opera from the end of the 17th century, King Arthur, or the British Worthy. This is a good point to quote again from a three-year-old interview with the accordionist: “I'm concerned primarily with exploring new possibilities of sound and new ways of playing the instrument. I'm not saying that what I do is completely new but it's new to me. Before I used to play acoustic, and a combination with electric instruments and effects offers me a new path.”
This evening at Brno’s Jazzfest was also conceived as a double concert. The role of support act - although this designation is inaccurate, because it was a fully-fledged performance – was taken by the Israeli trio Shalosh. Compared to Peirani’s crossover approach the young Israelis spoke a more predictable, and in the jazz sense of the word, classical language. However their concert also offered a wide range of expressive means – work with dynamics, full sound, intimate keyboard passages and stormy solos in the lower range of the piano, as well as a long solo on double bass and drums. In the epic quality of their pieces (see for example Everything Passes, developing from a comfortable retro intro into fast energetic passages) lost nothing on the Frenchmen. The Israelis also came up with unexpected cover versions – the familiar melodic sequence from Take On Me by the group A-Ha weaving its way between the tones of the bass and the beats of the drum, initially discreet but soon attracting attention. Shalosh, with three albums to their name, is thus not only evidence that the Israeli scene is still producing interesting figures, but also proof that popular music in all its shades is truly inspiring.
Shalosh, Vincent Peirani Quintet. Divadlo Husa na provázku, Brno, 15/4/2018, as part of the JAZZFESTBRNO festival
No comment added yet..