Dumoulin

This album explores the experience of foreigners in France. I see myself as belonging to a long genealogy of American artists who moved to Paris to escape the USA, a country that does not support its creators. Unlike my illustrious predecessors, I arrived in France during a pandemic that paralyzed the Parisian artistic scene. Paradoxically, the cancellation of live performances made it easier for me to collaborate with Parisian musicians and focus on composing. Rooted in the values and approaches of jazz, this album offers a musical view of Paris in the Covid-19 era. The ensemble’s direction, concept, and instrumentation is electronic and contemporary, using musical languages outside of the jazz tradition. Notably it mobilizes concepts from South Indian Carnatic music and North Africa. If French jazz musicians tend to mystify the New York and American music scene, having made the reverse journey, my music celebrates the mixing of culture that makes Paris a musical center.

Gravitational Waves is a dating story. The pianist Bruno Ruder and the saxophonist Rémi Dumoulin know each other for a long time and have very early maintained more than friendly relations (Bruno Ruder calls Rémi Dumoulin his brother). When the idea of starting a group together germinated, the choice of the drummer was quickly stopped, so great was the desire to rework with the legendary Billy Hart . There is also little suspense about the rest of the cast: Aymeric Avice (Radiation 10, Jean Louis, Circum Grand Orchestra) and Guido Zorn (Rockingchair, Pierre Durand Roots 4tet), two musicians among their favorites. Ruder and Dumoulin share voluntarily very open compositions (sinuous and fragile for the pianist, more direct for the saxophonist). The decision is to leave the maximum space to the American drummer so that it colors the score as it sees fit.

Algeria-born bassist Michel Benita, long a mainstay of the French jazz scene, introduces his revised quartet. Swiss flugelhornist Matthieu Michel and French drummer Philippe Garcia are retained from Benita’s Ethics band, and the quartet is completed by Belgian keyboardist Jozef Dumoulin. Dumoulin’s swirling, floating sounds and colours - he sounds like no other Fender Rhodes player - have inspired Benita to write evocative new music for the group. The repertoire also includes a bewitching cover version of Antônio Carlos Jobim’s “Inutil Paisagem”, the freely improvised "Cloud To Cloud", and a touching solo bass interpretation of Jule Styne’s “Never Never Land”. Looking At Sounds was recorded at Studios La Buissonne in the South of France in March 2019.