Nguyên Lê - Celebrating The Dark Side Of The Moon (CD)

Release Date: 10/31/14

No simple tribute, but a re-creation: Guitarist Nguyên Lê and the BDR Big Band enlighten the Floyd's repertoire

There are people who remember 1973 for a quartet whose psychedelic inclinations caused the band to throw a fortress of an album into the arena for lions to feed on: 'The Dark Side Of The Moon' was unique, a musical UFO which wrote Pink Floyd into rock history. Fast forward to NDR producers Stefan Gerdes and Axel Dürr, whose radio Big Band is no secret for jazz fans. They came up with the idea of re-reading the Dark Side monolith. A bold initiative, yes, because the project implied an orchestra capable of linking tradition with today. But on the other hand, the album they wanted to do involved Michael Gibbs - composer, arranger - and especially Nguyên Lê, a guitarist known for freely jumping stylistic borders. They'd be joining forces, and so the project seemed to have every chance of success. Lê typifies the musician whose art has come to bloom not only via his own compositions but also in celebrating the music of the past: Nguyên Lê makes sculptures of the latter as if it represented new clay... Remember 'Purple', his tribute to Jimi Hendrix. The truth about Lê is that, while always paying courteous deference to his source material, he's also wanted to express the full diversity of the imaginary world engendered by his own history, that of a voyager and self-taught virtuoso. And here he illuminates that imaginary world yet again: Lê enlightens the Floyd's repertoire and enchants it with the collusion of the NDR Bigband and its brilliant soloists, deploying new sound-textures created by the uplifting orchestrations of Michael Gibbs. The arrangements here provide choice settings for inspired improvisations and also reveal other compositions which appear as natural extensions of the original opus. The guitarist's playing sparkles with those fiery, oriental accents we've learned to love, sustained by guests he can trust: Jürgen Attig, Gary Husband, or Youn Sun Nah.