For "Jouissons de nos beaux ans!" the French tenor Cyrille Dubois returns to his favourite period in music: Baroque. Pursuing his mission as a trailblazer, he has teamed up with the Hungarian conductor Gy�rgy Vashegyi and the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles to create a recital aimed at reviving little-known treasures of the eighteenth-century French operatic repertoire - several of the pieces are recorded here for the first time. Focussing on haute-contre roles - the haute-contre voice being the ancestor of the leggero tenor, or t�nor l�ger - the program includes some fine excerpts from operas by Rameau, together with some equally beautiful arias and choruses by composers such as Dauvergne, Mondonville, but also Iso, Royer, Berton, and others. Cyrille Dubois is magnificent as Tarsis (in Tarsis et Z�lie by Francoeur and Rebel), flamboyant as Ag�nor (in Les Caract�res de la Folie by Bernard de Bury) and extremely moving as C�phale (in L'Aurore et C�phale by Francoeur). This recital provides a full picture of the Baroque hero - sometimes tender and amorous, sometimes fiery or triumphant - who receives here one of the finest interpretations.

Cyrille Dubois is unstoppable: after two albums dedicated to Liszt and the Boulanger sisters, both acclaimed by the critics, and a flamboyant complete set of Faur� songs, the tenor is back to his preferred repertoire, the French art-song. He reunites with his accomplice, pianist Tristan Ra�s, to bring the Bordeaux composer Louis Beydts (1895-1953) out of oblivion, as most of his pieces are recorded here for the first time. From these miniatures, Cyrille Dubois draws the sap of the musician's art. A pure product of French hedonism, it is refined and elegant, with a generous vocality but also daring, for Beydts forbids himself nothing. Echoes of jazz and light music, of Hahn or Faur�, polymodality and polytonality, his melodies traverse everything between fantasy, humor and contemplation with supreme freedom. By transporting us into this singular universe, Cyrille Dubois establishes himself as an invaluable performer of the repertoire and a pioneer of French music, with an uncommon mastery of the combination of word and music.

DUO PALINDROME 2002 2

PALINDROME 1 2002

Andrew Cyrille's longtime companion Oliver Lake praises the master of African-American rhythms in his poem The Real Cyrille: "making the real magic... The real rhythms... The real sounds... expanding his African/Haitian roots... surfing the drums for masterful lyrical snippets... a master of color... painting coloring riffing always stretchin' searchin' lookin' for that next sound color sound!" Lake's words astutely describe the artistry of Andrew Cyrille and the music that he makes on this record. Unlike his solo albums from the 70's and 80's, he has broadened the approach on this remarkable solo statement. Cyrille asserts, "I wanted to have a variety percussion instruments in the compositions. So I was thinking of melodies that could be played with tambourines, bells, cymbals, crotales, gongs, and mallets."