Alain Herbeth

Alain Jean-Marie is a French jazz pianist. He made his first recordings in 1969 (released in 1997 as piano biguines). At the same time he played regularly with the trio of Winston Berkley and Jean Claude Montredon. In 1973, he moved to Paris, where he accompanied jazz musicians such as Chet Baker, Sonny Stitt, Art Farmer, Johnny Griffin, Lee Konitz, and Max Roach. In 1979, he debuted with his own trio (Al Levitt on percussion, Gus Nemeth and later Riccardo Del Fra on bass). Since the 1980s, he has regularly performed with Barney Wilen, including as a duo on albums such as La Notenbleue (1986) and Dreamtime (1992). In 1986, he regularly accompanied Dee Dee Bridgewater. In 1987 he recorded the album Latin Alley in a duo with Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen…

His Debussy and Chopin recordings for harmonia mundi already offer ample evidence that Alain Planès is highly adept at selecting a period instrument best suited for the repertoire.

Again evoking his time as a student at the Paris Conservatoire, Canadian pianist Alain Lefèvre releases a second album of French music. Paris Memories, which follows My Paris Years, comprises music by Franck, Debussy and the man who taught Alain Lefèvre composition: Pierre Max Dubois. A pupil of the prolific and multi-faceted Darius Milhaud, Dubois (1930-1995) wrote music that is full of spirit and wit. Paris Memories culminates in a four-movement piano sonata by Dubois, composed in 1984 and dedicated to none other than Alain Lefèvre. “While a student at the Paris Conservatoire I had memorable encounters with great figures in the world of music,” says the pianist. “Of particular significance was the opportunity to get to know my teacher Pierre Max Dubois, and I’m profoundly moved to have finally been able to record his piano sonata.”

When the very young Marie-Claire Alain recorded for Erato for the second time, in late winter of 1955, she did not necessarily suspect that she was participating in a long discographic odyssey. The organist would become one of the emblematic personalities of the Erato catalogue, working with the French firm up until the early 1990s. On 27 February 1955, in the church of Sainte-Clotilde in Paris’s 7th arrondissement, she began a series of recordings devoted to French composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She initiallly elaborated a brief programme of famous toccatas: Gigout, Widor and Boëllmann. Brisk tempos, nimble articulations, a wide variety of colours: Marie-Claire Alain charmed with her vivacious spirit – the famous piece by Widor (finale of the Fifth Symphony) is of noteworthy elegance. These youthful accounts already reveal all of Marie-Claire Alain’s affinities with this repertoire with which she has not always been associated and of which, in truth, she promotes a fleet, airy, supple vision. However, it was a few weeks later, around 13 March 1955, that Erato offered the young French organist, fully concentrated at the time on Buxtehude’s music, her greatest joy: she could defend ‘in studio’ the works of her elder brother, Jehan Alain. It is a veritable godsend to rediscover these youthful documents, keen and always pertinent, by Marie-Claire Alain, recorded in the church of Saint-Merri a little more than a year after her very first recording for Erato devoted to J. S. Bach.