Vincent Peirani & Emile Parisien - Abrazo (CD)

Release Date: 08/28/20

Accordion and soprano saxophone: The French dream team embracing tango and jazz

Abrazo. Embrace. A close dance perhaps, but also with the hint of a friendly tussle. Could there be a more fitting metaphor for the duo of accordionist Vincent Peirani and soprano saxophonist Émile Parisien? 'It's like a marriage,' says Peirani. There can be very few musicians who have got to know each other as well as Peirani and Parisien have. 'Belle Époque', their 2014 debut album as a duo, was a tribute to soprano saxophonist Sidney Bechet, one of the biggest stars of early jazz in the 1920s and a wonderfully melodic player. Peirani and Parisien have left it nearly six years to produce the follow-up. 'Abrazo' is also a salute, this time not to a person but to an art form: to the tango with all its elegance, sadness and rhythmic and melodic power. And as in their debut as a duo, Peirani and Parisien do not reproduce the original repertoire, they prefer to play WITH it. Furthermore composers of South American imprint such as Astor Piazzolla, Tomás Gubitsch or Xavier Cugat form only a part of the repertoire they have developed. Parisien's and Peirani's own pieces have a way of moving in the spirit of tango. That is certainly the case for their arrangement of 'Army Dreamers' by Kate Bush, an artist for whom Peirani has a profound admiration. What unites all of these disparate elements is the particuarly deep affinity between Peirani and Parisien. One can hear at any moment the astonishingly sensitive way they are able to interact. And another common feature which they have between them is that both stand out currently as among the most important innovators on their instruments anywhere. In a truly magical way, they seem to have a sixth sense which makes everything fall into place. And it seems as if they can source their ingredients just about anywhere: whether it's traditional or modern jazz, free avant-garde, classical, folklore, rock, electronic, new or old music, they have an irrepressible hunger for the new, and an unquenchable appetite for adventure.