CD: From Billie Holiday to Edith Piaf - Marsalis & Galliano - Live in Marciac
DVD: Winton Marsalis & Richard Galliano Live in Marciac Directed by Franck Cassenti
Total time/60’19

The first breathes the past into his present ; the second, vice versa. Beyond their careers, what do these two soloists have in common, if not something greater than they are? It had to be two women, two legends, naturally : Edith Piaf and Billie Holiday.

Even so, does this virtuoso-trumpet and emancipated-accordion pairing announce just another fling between jazz and the popular French waltz they call the java ? The whirling themes of the latter, a suggestion of swing beyond swing, are present of course ; the music sways in motion and, although with a different mathematical elasticity, it appears to have been seasoned by some transatlantic kiss. Above all, there’s that cross-culture which Richard Galliano proclaims—from Bach to Satie and from Charlie Parker to Bill Evans—, and Richard has done more than just camouflage its trail (transmuting himself into a harmonica, piano, organ, flute, furtive breath, even...) ; he has established the accordion within the jazz family.

Probably, too, Wynton Marsalis’ history as a classical musician, reinforced by his yearly pilgrimage to Marciac, have constituted a temporary diversion from the work he has accomplished in preserving and enhancing the musical heritage of Black America, a legacy of which he is now much more than the curator-in-chief. An entire emotional genealogy escapes from the bell of his trumpet, masterfully so, like a family-tree whose bark has been rubbed with the bracing garlic of his imagination ; his phrases are boldly meditated, and as controlled as they remain expressive... with or without that plunger from the jungles of Ellingtonia.

François Lacharme