Non-Francophones are
at something of a disadvantage here.
The notes are only in French and there
are no texts. But let’s take a punt
anyway and rely on one’s ears. Guillaume
de Chassy has written a jazz-influenced
piece that employs a chorus, his own
piano playing and a drummer-percussionist.
He pushes the jazz influence but it
would be hard to describe the results
as jazz. Against a vocal weave for instance
his own piano playing is improvised;
he sounds mildly post bop as a stylist
whilst the chorus take on the difficult
task of resembling a string choir. Much
in this opening movement, Lune,
is as the title suggests contemplative
and spare. Then, in the second movement,
a jagged piano theme bisects a vaguely
African sounding choir.
The one of the movements
that does owe its origin to a stimulus
explicitly external to all this is the
third, Été 1917. Here
de Chassy quotes from Prokofiev’s First
Violin Concerto though it’s interesting
that the piano chords are distinctly
Rachmaninovian. We also have a piano
and percussion funeral dance with its
mildly keening choir. The Goya tribute
comes in the form of a Samba sounding
rhythm and Majos Desnudos goes
instead for romantic tints shaded by
sparky rhythmic piano. The title of
Danse des Trolls may sound a touch
Grieg-like but it actually encroaches
into those Cubano Bop sessions of the
late 1950s and early 1960s. The tribute
is putatively to Eastern European music
(part Turkish? Albanian?), whereas elsewhere
it’s to Flamenco but to my ears whenever
de Chassy celebrates either forms –
and three are apparently Flamenco derived
- the music always ends up sounding
Latin American.
Something of a strange
brew, then. Much melismatic choral writing
with improvised piano and percussion
parts and an attempt to coalesce and
fuse the two worlds. The ambition is
given spine by utilising folk derived
musics and by de Chassy’s own Herbie
Hancock inspired piano playing. Does
it work? And more to the point, what
actually is it? Put simply; I’m
not sure and I’ve no idea - but I enjoyed
listening to it.
Jonathan Woolf
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Guillaume de Chassy (piano)