Jacques Jacques Loussier

Pianist Jacques Loussier has spent much of his career performing Bach melodies with his jazz group. Loussier's Play Bach Trio was quite popular during 1959-1978. After a few years off, he formed a new trio along similar lines in 1985, the group heard on this CD. Although jazz and classical music have been combined together in many different ways through the years, no combo has worked harder at swinging Bach than Loussier's units. The pianist pays respect to Bach's melodies before swinging them and his improvisations are a natural outgrowth of the themes. This CD gives listeners an excellent example of his concept and is a constant delight.

Pianist Jacques Loussier showcases his world-renowned fusion of jazz and classical music on five classic Plays Bach collections on Decca: these recordings, featuring the famous version of ‘Air On A G String’, have previously sold approximately six million albums.

TAKE BACH is another in the history of recordings which treat the music of Bach in an experimental way. The approach of the Jacques Loussier Trio with pianists Güher and Süher Pekinel is one of melding Bach's concerti into jazz pieces through arrangement and improvisation. The idea is logical, as Baroque music is based often on a "figured bass," or set of symbols which the instrumentalist of the time (usually a keyboard player) would know how to interpret and build chords based upon the performance aspects of the time.

The Jazz Club series is an attractive addition to the Verve catalogue. With it's modern design and popular choice of repertoire, the Jazz Club is not only opened for Jazz fans, but for everyone that loves good music.
An acclaimed French pianist known for his jazz interpretations of classical works, Jacques Loussier rose to prominence leading his trio in the 1960s. A gifted classical musician in his youth, Loussier gravitated toward jazz and issued a series of innovative, genre-bending albums under the Play Bach title in which he reworked the music of Johanne Sebastian Bach…

There's something ironic about the attraction jazz musicians all seem to feel for the work of J.S. Bach. It's not that jazz and classical music aren't related on the contrary, jazz itself is a fusion of the rhythmic complexity of African music and the harmonic complexity of European music it's that Bach's particular genius was for counterpoint, a technique that jazz largely ignores. You can't improvise without abandoning strict counterpoint, and yet to depart from Bach's contrapuntal structures is, often, to disembowel his music. So there's a certain tension in the air when jazz players take on Bach. All of that said, there's simply no denying the charm of Loussier's trio arrangements.