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With “53”, his 15th record in a career that has stemmed over 30 years, the pianist Jacky Terrasson signs a magnificent collection of original pieces in the form of an intimate confession, transfigured by a kaleidoscopic “art de trio”, raised to a level of innate mastery worthy of the greatest maestros in the genre.
“Why 53? – Simply because I conceived of and recorded this music during my 53rd year and on this occasion I wanted to make a record that really reflected me. At the age of 53, a man begins to feel he has reached a form of maturity, is at his peak, and so can look at life with a certain distance and see things more clearly. With this record I wanted to give everything of myself, to take risks, while assuming my career, my artistic choices, my life … and my age! ”
Jacky Terrasson isn’t holding back: “53” is a record unlike any others in his rich and prolific career. It is rather a work signalling a turning point in his life; in which the pianist dares to venture into the intimate meanders of his own story, a life story that is at once tender, soothing and insidiously melancholy, while throwing himself resolutely into the unknown with experimental new collaborations and new aesthetic gambles.
And so Jacky opens up to the world and lays himself metaphorically naked. As the leading pianist he has always been, he has personally signed the entire repertoire on this new album. “Over the years I have built up a reputation of covering pieces and thereby making them my own, through a process of formal and stylistic deconstruction that can totally renew the listener’s perception of the piece. I have always enjoyed indulging in this kind of transformation. It’s my brand, we could say, but here I wanted to break with that, by proposing a musical world directly springing from my own personal compositions. Most of them are recent and I have tried to cover the wide spectrum of my preferred references and directions. ”
And the result is 16 tracks magnified by dense and precise arrangements, Terrasson takes his listeners on a tour of his musical aesthetics, multiplying the moods, styles, rhythms and references to compose a prismatic universe of astonishing coherence hidden under such festive formality.
Release Date: 27 September 2019
Format: CD | Digital
Label: Blue Note
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Last modified: October 12, 2019
