Jazz
Baptiste Trotignon
Baptiste Trotignon (b. 1974).
4 products
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- anon.: Sometimes I feel like a motherless child
- trad.: Were you there?
- trad.: I Got a Robe
- Trotignon: Why
- Price, Florence: Because
- trad.: Steal away
- trad.: Save Me Lord, Save Me
- trad.: Bright Sparkles in the Churchyard
- trad.: Nobody knows the trouble I seen
- Price, Florence: Resignation
- anon.: A Great Campmeetin'
- Price, Florence: Sunset
- trad.: My Lord, What a Mornin'
- anon.: By an’ by / There is a Balm in Gilead
- Barrett Strong, Norman Whitfield: I Heard It Through the Grapevine
- anon.: Deep river
THOUSANDS OF MILES (VINYL)
SONG, SONG, SONG: BAPTISTE TRO
Ancestral Memories
As is often the case in music, this album came about following a meeting of musicians. I was already familiar with Yosvany's music but we had never met. So when he called me in 2014 I was immediately enthused by the thought of sharing our cultures and history to produce a new musical blend full of meaning and reflecting our desire to create. Combining our strengths, our desires, and even our weaknesses (it is these that, I believe, add a touch of fragility and sensitivity to the emotions we try to get across) brought us a lot of satisfaction when we were looking into putting a repertoire together. We delved into the musical traditions of former French colonies (Haiti, Cuba, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Réunion, etc.) and tried to figure out how to integrate this material into a jazz quartet, something which is very popular at the moment. Learning has always been a driving force in my journey as an artist and I have always considered myself an eternal student, more so than a simple teller of temporary truths. This research came more naturally to Yosvany who was born and grew up in Cuba, a country which offers a wealth of ancestral traditions. As well as playing North American jazz wonderfully well, his work, whether in his playing or his composing, is also infused with "classic" European music, considered intellectual music, so our meeting was stimulating to say the least. The term intellectual as we would normally understand it is rather odd since the rhythms of African cultures and the thousands of songs inspired by them around the world are infinitely more sophisticated than most European music!
Because - Songs & Spirituals / Mobley, Trotignon
During the long era when Bach, Mozart and Beethoven were creating the musical canon of Western Europe, the songs of enslaved Africans resounded in the colonies on the other side of the Atlantic, expressing pain and longing, but also joy and the desire for freedom. The American countertenor Reginald Mobley - a rising figure in baroque music, notably under the direction of John Eliot Gardiner with whom he sings very regularly - and the French pianist Baptiste Trotignon, winner of numerous awards (Victoires du Jazz, Django d'Or) have combined their talents and sensibilities to celebrate these spirituals and the music of Black composers including Harry T. Burleigh (1866-1949) and Florence Price (1887-1953), whose beautiful transcriptions and melodies blend with Baptiste Trotignon's subtle arrangements of the famous Sometimes I feel like a motherless child or I got a robe... The melody "Because", composed by Florence Price on a poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar, inspired the title of the album: Because I had loved so hard (...) Because I had loved so vainly... Why this album? Because...
CONTENTS:
REVIEWS:
On their new album Because, American countertenor and early-music specialist Reginald Mobley and French pianist Baptiste Trotignon offer a collection of music from the Renaissance.
No, not that Renaissance.
The album is an updated compendium of Negro spirituals...and art songs published, collected, or written in and around the Harlem Renaissance — a period of revival in Black art, literature, culture, and music that spread from the Manhattan neighborhood throughout the United States and the Western world in the early 20th century...this movement and these songs have impacted American music on a scale that is unsurpassed, from jazz to pop to hip-hop, as well as a significant body of classical repertoire.
With Because, his first solo album, [Mobley] offers a powerful portrait addressing the musical legacy of Black spirituals and the complicated paradoxes contained within them: themes of bondage and salvation, power and tenderness, pain and beauty, spirituality and temporality.
We rarely hear a countertenor wade into this repertoire, and Mobley’s voice, which seems to get better by the year, is wonderfully pristine. Like good champagne, his tone is both effervescent and rich. In 20th-century art songs such as Florence Price’s “Because I Had Loved So Deeply” or Harry Burleigh’s “Jean,” or traditional spirituals like “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?” and “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen,” he does not produce sound so much as spin it in long, sumptuous phrases.
As an accompanist and arranger, Trotignon is both resourceful and inventive, and it’s clear that he also lives and breathes this music.
-- Early Music America
