The saxophone is unique in that it occupies a prominent place in both jazz and contemporary music. A lyrical instrument par excellence in the former, in the latter it becomes the terrain for explorations as fertile as they are daring, sometimes tinged with austerity, led by avant-gardes of all kinds.

 

This suite navigates improbably between these two universes, playing lightly on our expectations and perceptions. Quartertone chromatic counterpoints metamorphose into virtuoso jazz solos. Glissandi evoke in turn Wyschnegradsky’s sonic continuum, or languorous ornaments, at the heart of a hyperbole-filled ballad. Quarter tones combine in clever infra-chromatic strokes or mutate into intonationally correct blue notes. Structures from the harmonic series become, depending on context, the matrix of spectral pseudo-transformations... or simple blues chords, disguised as dominant sevenths.

 

Straight No Chaser becomes Tilll Eulenspiegel, Tristan und Isolde becomes Blue Monk. Austerity is succeeded by kitsch, with the underlying idea that beauty can emerge anywhere, in abstraction or lyricism, but above all in humor and lightness.