Piano/trumpet duets already carry their own dose of intimacy. Crystal and brass, woodwind and breath, there are many precedents in the history of our music, starting with Kenny Wheeler and John Taylor, two tender departed we spoke of a short while ago. This is exactly what Bernard Aimé explains in the liner notes to Soul Eyes, the new release from Jean-Marc Foussat's Fou Records label, which of course features a pianist and a trumpeter. The pairing is unprecedented, at least on record: Cécile Cappozzo on piano and Jean-Luc Cappozzo on trumpet and flugelhorn. An encounter? Not really. Just more intimacy. A father/daughter relationship exposed with a frank and warm light on another heritage material: jazz standards.
And not just any jazz standards, but pieces by Mingus and Waldron; Two elegant, uncompromising, fusionists whose paths crossed in the late ‘50s, notably on Pithecanthropus Erectus, whose title track our duo covers in an emotionally charged suite, linked to “Soul Eyes”, one of Waldron's most penetrating standards, which we enjoyed - among other things - on the crepuscular One More Time in trio with Avenel and Lacy on the late, lamented Sketch label, at the turn of the century.
But also, earlier, with Webster Young, trumpet genius.
Music that the duo explore to its very essence, even deconstructing it with mischief and an assumed reverence for the work... This means not giving it an immutable character, but appropriating it and translating it into a colloquial language... The freedom of discourse is one of the significant features of Jean-Luc Cappozzo's music. It is clearly genetically transmitted. From the chosen pieces, father and daughter construct a conniving and entirely personal discourse that is in every way smiling. We remember the trumpeter's duet with Géraldine Keller on Air Prints, and here we find the same sense of play, in its most childlike sense, at once dreamy and inventive, colourful and turbulent... But with her daughter, the dimension is different, and we discover this pleasure of the old game, which goes back so far in its roots that it's very moving. The first track, ‘No More Tears - Good Bye Pork Pie Hat - Nostalgia in Time Square’, combines three tracks, two by Mingus and one by Waldron.
Throughout this long first track, there are returns, quotations and breaks that all come together to form a lively whole. We could mention all sorts of individual moments, the dreamlike breath of the opening and the sparing notes of a pianist who knows how to capture the emotions in the depths of the left hand, the luminous opening of the ‘anthem’ Pork Pie Hat by the trumpet... But in reality, what counts is the ensemble, the interaction, the alliance that sometimes works head-on (wise daughter, whimsical father) and often in the caressing benevolence of a freedom offered. Fou Records has given the Cappozzo family carte blanche. We can thank them for allowing us to hear this testimony to a moment of complicity that has something universal about it. You can't help but enjoy this little pleasure that puts a smile on your face.
A celebration.
And a completely unrelated photo... (doesn't it...)
