Emile Parisien & Roberto Negro – Les Métanuits (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Emile Parisien & Roberto Negro – Les Métanuits (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 38:32 minutes | 389 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ACT Music

Tribute to the 100th birthday of the composer György Ligeti. 11 improvisations by Emile Parisien (soprano saxophone) and Robert Negro (piano), inspired by the String Quartet No. 1 “Métamorphoses Nocturnes”.

Ligeti appreciated improvisation in jazz, but rejected it within his compositions. Accordingly, Parisien and Negro proceeded respectfully: “The original motifs, moods and colors always flash out. Harmonically, we expanded them with our ideas,” explains Negro. In their Ligeti homage, they do not dwell on historicizing conventions of an old abstract avant-garde, but let beguilingly current, stirringly concrete music resound.

György Ligeti was still only a very young composer, barely thirty years old, when he composed his first String Quartet in 1953. It was subtitled Métamorphoses nocturnes and was influenced by Béla Bartok. Seventy years later, two of the most representative musicians of the vitality and open-mindedness of the contemporary European jazz scene, the Italian pianist, Roberto Negro, and the French saxophonist, Emile Parisien, have undertaken to take on this work of mysterious beauty and spotless modern relevance with their Métanuits. They adapt it as a duo using the expressive range of their respective instruments and continue the cycle of its metamorphoses by confronting it full on, sometimes at the risk of using improvisation. Here, Emile Parisien and Robert Negro plunge into the depths of the score to reveal its most profound guiding principles. It is not so much a transcription (strictly speaking) but more of a bewitching transfiguration with magical allure. With a great expressive coherence, even though it adopts a great diversity of moods throughout the movements (from tumult to melancholic evanescence), their largely improvised and wholly personal music is revealed lyrical, mischievous, impetuous, and poetically moving: just like the original! – Stéphane Ollivier

Tracklist:
1. Emile Parisien & Roberto Negro – Allegro grazioso (04:32)
2. Emile Parisien & Roberto Negro – Vivace, capriccioso (05:01)
3. Emile Parisien & Roberto Negro – Adagio mesto (01:17)
4. Emile Parisien & Roberto Negro – Presto (02:59)
5. Emile Parisien & Roberto Negro – Prestissimo (03:54)
6. Emile Parisien & Roberto Negro – Andante tranquillo (01:45)
7. Emile Parisien & Roberto Negro – Tempo di Valse (05:40)
8. Emile Parisien & Roberto Negro – Subito prestissimo (01:51)
9. Emile Parisien & Roberto Negro – Meccanico (02:40)
10. Emile Parisien & Roberto Negro – Alla marcia, pesante (06:03)
11. Emile Parisien & Roberto Negro – Largo (02:43)

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