For several years now, I've been looking for a subtle way to blend my experience as a jazz musician with the realm of chamber music. With Istanbul cellist Sedef Ercetin and her fellow Athenian pianist Maria Papapetropoulou, I fancied myself taking up the violin's place in an emblematic trio. Bolstered by an invaluable travelling companion - Antoine Banville, here on percussion - the group finds a balance of colours and rhythms in which I weave the twists and turns of my writing and my impressionistic and intimate pictures bring you as much joy as we had in crafting them Stephane Guillaume

Fabrice Moreau writes of his new release: "As a drummer I think of improvisation the moment I play a note, written or not. The rehearsal/creation of my compositions was a two-stage process- firstly, playing the music as written in the score like a 'traditional' orchestra would do, then detaching oneself from the score and working on stepping back, on silence and the emergence of melodic lines like memories that suddenly surface. I wanted to link my music with my painting, to connect the drummer's gesture to the painter's. I make no distinction between the two disciplines, I have always had a very close relationship with them and I've always felt an almost simultaneous desire to play/compose and to paint, to externalize a vision and an inner song. And navigating this sometimes limpid, sometimes mysterious musical or pictorial language, one foot in reality, the other elsewhere, I like to feel a giddiness and find what I haven't been looking for."

St�phane Kerecki grew up with a passion for jazz and electronic music; it is by wanting to gather these two interests that the bass player decided to devote himself to this project. Starting from the desire to stay in an acoustic context and to play these themes as if they were Jazz themes (no electronic instrument is used apart from the effects on the Fender Rhodes), all the recorded music has been played live. This record is part of the tradition of Jazz which has always been to appropriate the popular music of his time and add to his repertoire to improvise. "His total instrumental mastery and his intelligence of the sound organization allow him, escaping the clich�s of the double bass... to impose himself in the heart of a set as a major voice..." (Philippe Carles)

Daniel Humair had his first contact with the drum in a Geneva fanfare at the age of 7 years. At the age of 14, he became passionate about the New Orleans Jazz and became part of several amateur groups, soon discovered modern jazz and became a professional musician after winning the first prize in three categories at the Zurich amateur festival in 1955. Afterward, he spent several years performing and traveling in Switzerland, Belgium, Sweden and Germany. This new release, Modern Art, is an invitation to discover new ideas. The pieces of music by Vincent Le Quang, Stephanie Kerecki, and Humair himself are not to be thought of as tributes. Humair prefers to think of them in terms of correspondences, parallel ideas, encounters, affinities and out of the ordinary phenomena. They have chosen several 20th century painters to give them one of two possibilities: either they already had a composition in their pack that matched up with the pictorial world of a certain artist, or they’ve written an original composition inspired by an artist’s work. This release is truly a unique take on the connection between music and the visual arts.

Johann Sebastian Bach never hesitated to adapt, rework and truly metamorphose his own music with remarkable aplomb. There is no shortage of examples. It is this model of transcription that the D!ssonanti ensemble has sought to follow in the programme on this disc. With the notable exception of the Ciaccona BWV 1004, originally written for solo violin - and already the subject of countless transcriptions throughout the ages - they have for the most part drawn on the keyboard repertoire, and in particular the great organ, an instrument that is both fascinating and sometimes a little intimidating. The Passacaglia and Thema Fugatum BWV 582, almost always written for four voices, is the culmination of this repertoire. Each of the members of the ensemble, in the course of a busy life spent in contact with Bach's music played on period instruments and with a concern for authenticity in the most prestigious ensembles (Les Arts Florissants, Pygmalion, Freiburger Barockorchester, Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, Concerto Copenhagen...), have acquired sufficient proximity to his musical language to respect, if not the letter, at least the spirit. "Our hope is to use these adaptations to show Bach in a light that is both new and familiar. A protean Bach that we've had a lot of fun imagining - and the treasure chest we've opened is not about to close again...".

A musical journey through Renaissance Europe via pieces that were highly popular and whose melodies were reused and varied by some of the best composers of the time.

“In this way, La Barre, your enchanting flute inspires tender feeling, Your triumphant sounds ignite the passions; They even make Love more tender, And, wanting only to hear you, Love allows you to wound hearts.” An extract from an Ode by the poet Antoine Houdar de La Motte (1672-1731) these lines sing the praises of one of the first and most famous French flautists. This moving tribute is also evidence of the friendly relations that existed between the poet and the musician who set two of his libretti to music, first in 1700 (Le Triomphe des arts) and then in 1705(La Vénitienne). Michel de La Barre wrote numerous “serious” and drinking songs, published mostly in the main anthologies of the period between 1694 and 1732, but he is above all the originator of a specific and idiomatic repertoire for his instrument. He is the composer of three collections of the first pieces for transverse flute and basso continuo (1702, 1710 and 1722), of seventeen suites for two flutes without bass, a genre of which he was also the originator, and lastly three important books of pieces for trio (“for violins, flutes and oboes”), published in 1694, 1700 and 1707 which are also amongst the first of the genre. Thanks to his art and the compositions closely linked to his instrument, Michel de La Barre is considered the founder of the French school of flute.