L'equipe du 22 Mars 2008

In music one plus one can sometimes equal three - for instance, the sum of a project is often more than the value of its individual participants. A perfect example: the collaboration of the Italian singer Carla Marcotulli with the American composer, arranger, and multi-instrumentalist Dick Halligan for their first ACT album How Can I Get To Mars?
This CD has become as multifaceted an endeavour as Marcotulli’s and Halligan’s careers. There is a successful synthesis of different musical elements in Halligan’s riveting melodic songs. Halligan states that, “On the melodies I arranged the strings in a very classical way. The jazzy part mainly comes through Sandro Gibellini’s guitar.” And naturally through Carla Marcotulli’s voice as she swings through every combination and language. In addition, on Tony Scott’s “Lady Day” there is a sophisticated homage to their mutual musical influence, Billie Holiday…

Rue Du Soleil consists of Dragan Jakovljevic, Yavuz Uslu , Alfonso Bianco, Claudio Montuori. These four friends formed Rue Du Soleil in 1999 by pooling their equipment and building a studio. Until now they have spent most of their time creating and searching for new sounds and grooves. Their creative capacity is so spectacular that Cafe del Mar Music proposed a recording contract to them. "Emotions" is their 3rd album.

Solal remains one of the most inventive, brilliant, and woefully underappreciated pianists in modern jazz. This CD should serve further notice as to his genius in completely reshaping and reinventing standards with the poetic fervor of a restless soul. Bassist Marc Johnson and drummer Paul Motian contribute mightily to Solal's raised temperature and metamorphosed rhythmic and harmonic notions, values he alone should be allowed to define. The proof is in the listening. Six of the nine pieces are standards, and if thought you'd never hear a fresh take of "Round 'Bout Midnight," here it is. Intentionally convoluted, more angular than Monk, Solal, completely off the cuff, molds this well-wrought melody in a 20th-century modernism that defies any standard nomenclature…