Matthieu Chedid Mama Sam

Suite for Modigliani is a homage to a passion that clarinetist Matteo Pastorino has felt since childhood, his passion for Amedeo Modigliani.

To call West Side Soul one of the great blues albums, one of the key albums (if not the key album) of modern electric blues is all true, but it tends to diminish and academicize Magic Sam's debut album. This is the inevitable side effect of time, when an album that is decades old enters the history books, but this isn't an album that should be preserved in amber, seen only as an important record. Because this is a record that is exploding with life, a record with so much energy, it doesn't sound old. Of course, part of the reason it sounds so modern is because this is the template for most modern blues, whether it comes from Chicago or elsewhere. Magic Sam may not have been the first to blend uptown soul and urban blues, but he was the first to capture not just the passion of soul, but also its subtle elegance, while retaining the firepower of an after-hours blues joint…

Veteran Chicago drummer Sam Lay is a famous behind-the-scenes blues and rock character - he played with the great Howlin' Wolf in the '60s, backed Bob Dylan when he "went electric" at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival and was an early member of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. He isn't famous for singing, however, and that's the main problem with the latest of his many collaborations with guitarist Fred James. The band's rhythm section is as strong as you'd expect, with Lay and acoustic bassist Bob Kommersmith locking into confident, slightly laid-back grooves on "Baby How Long" and the closing instrumental "Midnight Drag." But despite Lay's deep, funny charisma on "I Like Women" and "I Got Two Women," he was better at backing the Wolf than he is replacing him.

The duo, Alexandre Souillart and Mathieu Acar, offer a repertoire of works created for saxophone and representative of the romantic aesthetic.

“Belgian pianist Matthieu Idmtal creates a wonderfully colorful and profound universe that not only surprised me, but even more completely captivated me. His great technical vocabulary leads to an interpretation that combines a refined sound with penetrating expressiveness in a sublime way.” – Opus Klassiek

The music of the French native, Valencia-based cellist Matthieu Saglio combines influences from all around the Mediterranean, from North Africa to Southern Europe. He first gained international recognition as a member of the trio "NES" and the album "Ahlam" in 2018. Soon after Saglios' solo debut "El Camino de los Vientos" earned huge success, especially in the digital world, and has been played over seven million times on Spotify alone.