Comboio

Meeting

Michel Donato and Pierre Tanguay, two key figures of the Quebec music scene, join hands with Jean-Philippe Collard-Neven, the atypical Belgian pianist who navigates between jazz and classical music. They serve up a dreamy musical feast of new and fresh harmonies and that pays attention to the spaces between notes. This is a must for lovers of music in its purest form. This is Jean-Philippe Collard-Neven’s second release with Igloo Records. Collard-Neven is a professor of music and improvisation at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Mons. In addition to a teaching career, he maintains an active performing life, and has performed as a pianist with the Namur Chamber Orchestra, with Art Zoyd and the Philharmonic of Antwerp, and with the Philharmonic Orchestra of Lille with all Musiques Nouvelles.

The drummer Lionel Beuvens has just unveiled his second album, "Earthsong": a tribute to earch, nature, adventure, freedom, and the energy released by strong, contrasting and complementary personalities playing off each other. This project was created as part of a project for the Gaume Jazz Festival in 2011, which led to a debut album (Trinity, 2013) and numerous concerts. This enabled the group to create its own identity where each member can freely express themselves. The many concerts were of such intensity that they quite naturally incited Lionel to write a new repertoire, and bring the group to the Gaume Jazz Festival for a second creation in 2015. For this second opus, the quartet enlisted the creative forces of French saxophonist Guilhem Verger and singer Natashia Kelly. The sax boosts the possible interactions between the musicians and the breadth of the writing, while the singing focuses the energy and makes the music more accessible. Lionel's influences are wide and varied: grooves inspired by African music, Steve Coleman or even Greetings From Mercury; and the atmosphere of Bill Evans or Henri Purcell. The interaction between the musicians echoes the Miles Davis Quintet. "Earthsong" follows in the path of the first release: a balance between tradition and modernism, where the groove is there for the melody and the melody is there for the groove. An album with a braod repertoire that boasts compositions of richness and depth.