Edouard Ferlet – Think Bach, Op. 2 (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 49:55 minutes | 890 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Mélisse

After playing Russians in four hands or at the side of the harpsichord, the jazz pianist returns to the solo exercise of reflection around Johann Sebastian Bach. Challenge raised, body and soul. Think Bach or think Bach and even rethink is the project of pianist Edouard Ferlet, balanced on the thread that distinguishes reproduction and invention, where as written by pianist and composer Adrian O. Smith (Arden Day) the work Bach would be both “the promise and the turn that the pianist would give us what the conjurers call prestige.”

(more…)

Edouard Ferlet – Think Bach (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:04:48 minutes | 930 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Mélisse

How could one deconstruct Bach’s music when this opus has had such a structuring effect? How could one subvert a tribute to the organist of Leipzig and not bow before the “old wig”, as Busoni liked to call him endearingly? In short, how today variate Bach without turning the master into a kitsch cantor? In much the same way is there a significant nuance between laughing at and laughing with, Edouard Ferlet offers to play with Bach rather than merely play Bach; and because to play is to do hence we stand at the core of a poetical process. A process by which the pianist “recomposes” both substracting and enhancing: a few notes are extracted here and there from a prelude’s voices whereas elsewhere some are luckily added without ever being reduced to simple ornaments. By no doubt the German composer would have approved a piano thus enhanced with such delicate sounds – as we know he had a preference for the clavicord’s softness.

(more…)

Edouard Ferlet – Plucked’N Dance (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 48:26 minutes | 1,01 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics

A journey through countries, periods and styles on the theme of dance. The themes and melodies are borrowed from Spanish, Turkish, Russian, Italian, English, Hungarian and French composers, inspired by folk music and dances. Édouard Ferlet has used this music to compose new pieces, arranged for harpsichord and piano. There are no direct quotations here, rather a thread which is woven between these well-known melodies and a new musical vocabulary. In each piece Violaine Cochard and Edouard Ferlet improvise freely, each with their individual ‘temperament’ and sensibility. They work on sonority, texture, the exploration of sound palettes, specialization, phrasing, distillation. The two artists seek to develop sonic possibilities, articulations, playing techniques and interaction between their musical personalities. A special feature is their work on pulse and tempo, with compound meters linked with the rhythms of folksongs and dances, which are often in compound time. Each piece is underpinned by an individual dramaturgy; the melodies are immediately appealing because they remind us of something while surprising us with jazz and contemporary arrangements.

(more…)

Édouard Ferlet – Pianoïd (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 35:25 minutes | 708 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Mélisse

True to his taste for side steps, collaborations and experiments, pianist Edouard Ferlet once again takes liberties with genres and moves away from jazz to explore territories closer to contemporary music or pop. Patiently matured over the years around a device imagined with the sound director Joachim Olaya, Pianoïd finds points of balance between composition and improvisation, complexity and simplicity, human and mechanical, over pieces where echoes of the work of Philip Glass or Nils Frahm.

(more…)