Baptiste Trotignon, Greg Hutchinson, Matt Penmann – Brexit Music (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Baptiste Trotignon, Greg Hutchinson, Matt Penmann – Brexit Music (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 53:13 minutes | 1,05 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © naïve

“Brexit Music” is not a political album. But there is a taste for British mockery in the title, which came to the artist’s mind long after the repertoire was conceived: in the end, art should survive all social fads. The French pianist and his acoustic jazz trio wanted a fresh, playful sound, groove and a bit of humor.

Covering a popular song is common practice for jazz musicians, yet the idea of an entire album centered solely around British pop music was not a given: it was a challenge to stay alive without the lyrics. So often the plain material of these songs remained, even if most of them were an exciting and joyful part of Trotignon’s teenage years.

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Reginald Mobley and Baptiste Trotignon – Because (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Reginald Mobley and Baptiste Trotignon – Because (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 55:24 minutes | 992 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics

During the long era when Bach, Mozart and Beethoven were creating the musical canon of Western Europe, the songs of African slaves resounded in the colonies on the other side of the Atlantic, expressing pain and longing, but also joy and the desire for freedom. The American countertenor Reginald Mobley – a rising figure in baroque music, notably under the direction of John Eliot Gardiner with whom he sings very regularly – and the French pianist Baptiste Trotignon, winner of numerous awards (Victoires du Jazz, Django d’Or) have combined their talents and sensibilities to celebrate these spirituals and the music of Black composers including Harry T. Burleigh (1866-1949) and Florence Price (1887-1953), whose beautiful transcriptions and melodies blend with Baptiste Trotignon’s subtle arrangements of the famous Sometimes I feel like a motherless child or I got a robe… The melody “Because”, composed by Florence Price on a poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar, inspired the title of the album: Because I had loved so hard (…) Because I had loved so vainly… Why this album? Because…

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Kate Lindsey, Baptiste Trotignon – Thousands of Miles (Bonus Track Version) (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Kate Lindsey, Baptiste Trotignon – Thousands of Miles (Bonus Track Version) (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:12:28 minutes | 1,15 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics

Closing the distance between classical music and Broadway, between the old world and the new, this album is born out of a stunning encounter between two performers. Kate Lindsey is an opera star whose career is skyrocketing. She has stunned audiences with her performances of Mozart and Purcell. Baptiste Trotignon is a multi award-winning jazz pianist who plays with big names like Brad Mehldau or Tom Harrell, but who has a long-held interest in classical music, even composing a piano concerto for Nicholas Angelich. Together, they have produced a rich and varied programme around the songs of Kurt Weill, from Nanna’s Lied to Trouble Man, and classics from The Threepenny Opera and Lost in the Stars.

This journey through three European languages brings the listener to the very beginnings of jazz, and features all-new arrangements and deft improvisations by pianist Baptiste Trotignon. Lindsey and Trotignon also pay homage to three composers who, like Weill, all emigrated to the United States: Alma Mahler, Zemlinsky and Korngold. London-based American mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey joins Alpha Classics for several recordings over the coming years.

“a stunning encounter between two performers”

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Baptiste Trotignon – Body and Soul (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Baptiste Trotignon - Body and Soul (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz] Download

Baptiste Trotignon – Body and Soul (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 52:20 minutes | 875 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Paradis Improvisé

No one disputes his talents as a solo pianist. This is not his first beautiful solo opus.

At 48, Baptiste Trotignon’s recording career as a leader suggests great determination. He composes, writes a lot. He does not deny his cultural origins, directing him recently on classical and contemporary European paths, but when he is allowed to record for Paradis Improvisé in solo, the total freedom which is offered to him leads him without any doubt towards a choice of heart, ten standards so viscerally anchored that one grasps their bearing on the sincerity of his soul as a jazz pianist. Ten nuggets.
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Baptiste Trotignon, Didier Ithursarry, Orchestre National de Bretagne, Ariane Matiakh – Didier Squiban: La Symphonie du Ponant (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Baptiste Trotignon, Didier Ithursarry, Orchestre National de Bretagne, Ariane Matiakh - Didier Squiban: La Symphonie du Ponant (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz] Download

Baptiste Trotignon, Didier Ithursarry, Orchestre National de Bretagne, Ariane Matiakh – Didier Squiban: La Symphonie du Ponant (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:05:26 minutes | 690 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Coop Breizh

Didier Squiban has been a loyal companion of the Orchester National de Bretagne for over twenty years. After the recording of his first two symphonies, the Symphonie Bretagne and the Symphonie Iroise, we were able to complete the symphonic trilogy imagined by Didier Squiban by recording in 2021, the Symphonie du Ponant, in the company of great performers such as Baptiste Trotignon on the piano and Airelle Besson on trumpet.
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Baptiste Trotignon, Yosvany Terry – Ancestral Memories (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Baptiste Trotignon, Yosvany Terry - Ancestral Memories (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz] Download

Baptiste Trotignon, Yosvany Terry – Ancestral Memories (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 59:47 minutes | 669 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Okeh

Cross-fertilisation has always been at the heart of jazz. And this superb album which celebrates the musical richness and diversity of the African diaspora in the USA and in the old French colonies in the Americas is further proof of this truism. With Ancestral Memories, Cuban saxophonist Yosvany Terry and French pianist Baptiste Trotignon have created a kind of monument to the past, which they root in the present: the present of their personality, both human and musical. With a contained rhythm section – Yunior Terry on double bass and Jeff “Tain” Watts on the drums – their encounter takes its inspiration from the musical tradition of the French Antilles and draws deeply from the well of this music, before pushing on and taking it further. And it gives way to a fine and warmly-accented swing music. As for Trotignon, a traveller of beautiful paths and a daring adventurer, Ancestral Memories must count as one of his finest records.
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Baptiste Trotignon – You’ve Changed (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Baptiste Trotignon - You've Changed (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz] Download

Baptiste Trotignon – You’ve Changed (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:05:35 minutes | 603 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Sony Classical

You’ve changed. Naming his album thus, Baptiste Trotignon foretells both a personal and an artistic transformation. In the booklet of the album, the pianist even writes: “This album tells a story. The story of an evolution, an inner transformation, a kind of a chrysalis… After several albums where I wanted to emphasise percussion, not only the piano percussion but also the one from the groove masters with whom it was recorded, I wanted to return to my first love: the purity and authenticity of an acoustic sound, the raw sound in its obviousness.” It’s not surprising therefore that You’ve Changed offers the listener an intimate hour where purity, silence, space and an emphasis on tone reign above all else. The saying less is more certainly rings true here… Ten out of the sixteen tracks are played solo on the piano, a setup which Trotignon has not revisited on an album in fifteen years.
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Baptiste Trotignon – Dusk Is A Quiet Place (2013) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Baptiste Trotignon - Dusk Is A Quiet Place (2013) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz] Download

Baptiste Trotignon – Dusk Is A Quiet Place (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 49:02 minutes | 493 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © naïve

For improvising musicians, the duo is the most intimate of set-ups. Two musicians, alone together, reaching out and responding to the other in the moment, create a glorious frisson. In the right hands, the result is honest and revelatory music.
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Baptiste Trotignon, Orchestre Victor Hugo,Jean-François Verdier – Anima (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Baptiste Trotignon, Orchestre Victor Hugo,Jean-François Verdier - Anima (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Baptiste Trotignon, Orchestre Victor Hugo,Jean-François Verdier – Anima (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 55:27 minutes | 1000 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Alpha Classics

An eminent ambassador of the ‘French touch’ in jazz and winner of many awards (Django-Reinhardt, Victoires du Jazz, Django d’Or, SACEM jazz awards) – Baptiste Trotignon has been composing for symphony orchestras and classical musicians for several years. The music on this album is not ‘symphonic jazz’, says Trotignon, ‘but you can hear the sounds of the Afro-American musical language, whether in the harmonies or in the very motoric rhythms that are always in motion (dances, toccatas, grooves)’. There are three pieces on the programme: Anima, the most ambitious work he has written to date, not only in terms of length but also in terms of orchestration, density ‘and a much stronger desire to make the orchestra sing’; Hiatus et Turbulences, his very first piece with orchestra; and finally L’air de rien, a lighter piece which ends with a tango, and on which he himself plays the piano and adds improvised sections.
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