Henri Texier

Henri Texier – An Indian’s Life (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 56:53 minutes | 1,25 GB | Genre: Contemporary Jazz, Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Label Bleu

By explicitly titling his new album “An Indian’s Life”, double bassist and composer Henri Texier beautifully closes a sort of informal phonographic triptych — begun in 1993 with “An Indian’s Week” and continued in 2016 with “Sky Dancers” — making the Native American cause and, beyond that, the quasi-mythological figure of the “Indian”, both the imaginary matrix and the poetic driving force of his artistic gesture. Because if in the end Henri Texier can claim in this new record to have managed once again to resonate with the Native American psyche, it is undoubtedly in this living relationship to memory, to ancestors, to tradition, that his music ( re)comes into play each time in such a sensitive way. Henri Texier will never be an Indian, he knows it, just as he will never be Charles Mingus – but both meet in his music and it is all his genius to make his most intimate voice heard through this imaginary dialogue.

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Henri Texier – At “L’improviste” (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:11:43 minutes | 807 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Label Bleu

There are groups that one constructs painstakingly, one element at a time, and then there are those that just spring up on you, like an epiphany. This is truly the first time that a group simply crept up from behind and surprised me! Unexpectedly gathered together during a residency offered to Sébastien Texier by L’Improviste, a welcoming club located on a Paris barge, this Quartet spontaneously found itself “in orbit” at equal distances around a common sphere. Even though I had known him for many years, I had never played with Louis Moutin. But Sébastien, François, Louis and I struck an instantaneous balance with each other… a novel sort of dance. It was a unique feeling of complementarity on an amazing level, where our ideas met and intermingled effortlessly…like telepathy.

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Henri Texier – Sky Dancers (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:09:50 minutes | 1,46 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Label Bleu

Return Henri Texier, legend of the transalpine jazz, with the last mutation of the group started with Francois Corneloup to the baritone and the son Sébastien to the contralto. The two saxophonists were in the organic of the Strada Sextet ((V) ivre, Label Bleu 2005), they animated the most recent Hope Quartet (with the drummer Louis Moutin) and we find them together here, next to the guitarist Nguyen Le and the pianist Armel Dupas.

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Henri Texier – Sand Woman (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:03:20 minutes | 1,44 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Label Bleu

More active than ever, Henri Texier plays around with revisiting the past. With Sand Woman, the double bass player mostly sifts through his recordings from the 70s, his JMS Records era. With a quintet as inspired as ever, composed of guitarist Manu Codjia (impressive in his improvisations), drummer Gauthier Garrigue, saxophonists Vincent Lê Quang and his son Sébastien, he revisits his old themes like Amir and Les là-bas. Also on the menu of this celebration of exploration and bifurcation, there are more recent compositions. But the result is still very consistent, as Texier remains a leader who always ensures that his accomplices express themselves. At last, Sand Woman will also remind you that the man is a great composer (Hungry Man) as well as a great sound producer (the ten-minute long Indians).

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Henri Texier – Concert anniversaire 30 ans de Label Bleu (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:10:25 minutes | 1,57 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Label Bleu

Here is an exceptional album, released on the occasion of the anniversary concert of 30 years of the label amiénois. To celebrate this date, the label offered a carte blanche to this musician faithful among all who recorded about twenty albums on Blue label, namely the bassist Henri Texier. For the occasion, he was accompanied by some friends of European jazz, old companions like Michel Portal, Bojan Z. but also improvisers who contributed more recently to the history of the label, as Xavier de Pourquery. Not to mention the talented Manu Codjia, Edward Perraud who contribute in their own way to renew, prolong the spirit of this original French label.

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Henri Texier – Chance (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 54:04 minutes | 1,17 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Label Bleu

Henri Texier, double bass player, multi-instrumentalist traces his path, record after record since 1967. The more the years pass, the more the importance and the originality of Henri Texier impose themselves on all the musicians, fellow travelers, or not. A wonderful combination of a great tradition of double bass and a modernism that has never been frightened of anything. Time passing seems to have no hold on his game: round, powerful and above all animated by an extraordinary awareness of rhythm. A high-flying cast and a sequence of scenes and landscapes that give the listener the certainty of a global scenario.

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Henri Texier – Heteroklite Lockdown (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 47:19 minutes | 582 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Label Bleu

We are beginning to measure the impact of the current pandemic on record production. Many are, in fact, the albums imagined and recorded during or after the different periods of confinement that we have all gone through. Although not recognized as essential by the accounting bureaucracy and health authorities, music (like any form of creation) is nonetheless a vital necessity for the artists themselves and a powerful breath of fresh air. for their audiences.
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