Un subtil mélange entre la puissance du classique et l’authenticité de la musique cubaine
Premier album 15 février 2019, LA Café Label / Wagram Music
Nouvel album septembre 2022 " Caribbean Nocturne "
« Caribbean Nocturnes », le second album de Joachim Horsley, est le fruit d’un long travail en collaboration avec de nombreux musiciens américains (Jeanine De Bique, Charlie Siem), caribéens (Damian Nueva Cortez, Pedro Barrios, Orito y Jenn) et européens (Natasha Rogers, Thomas Bellon). Épaulé par deux orchestres (The Hollywood Chamber Orchestra de Californie et The Nu Deco Ensemble de Floride), Joachim Horsley parvient pour la deuxième fois à revisiter les incontournables de la musique classique en suivant les codes des musiques latines (rumba, cha cha, son…).
Sur scène, il interprète ses oeuvres au piano accompagné par un quatuor de musiciens franco-caribéens (percussions, basse).
Un rendez-vous unique, aussi enjoué qu’inspiré !
Présentation de l'album Via Havana
15 février 2019
Près de 10 millions d’internautes ont plébiscité Joachim Horsley pour sa version « cubanisée » du 2ème mouvement de la 7ème symphonie de Beethoven.
Ce talentueux pianiste hors-norme a su produire un subtil mélange entre la puissance du classique et l’authenticité de la musique cubaine. Joachim Horsley revisite dans une version cubaine les œuvres de Mahler, Chostakovitch, Bach, Chopin accompagné par 3 musiciens (contrebasse / timbales / congas). Comment ne pas écouter ces arrangements uniques sans se laisser porter par la rythmique ?
Organiser la rencontre entre la musique classique et la musique latine est un projet particulièrement ambitieux tant ces deux univers artistiques semblent s’opposer. C’est pourtant le pari fou qu’a relevé Joachim Horsley, pianiste américain virtuose et compositeur de musique de film.
« Via Havana », son premier album, est le résultat d’un travail colossal qui aura duré deux ans. Imaginez donc : apprendre et maîtriser les œuvres les plus complexes et techniques du répertoire classique européen (Mozart, Beethoven, Saint-Saëns, Malher…), puis les arranger suivant les codes esthétiques des musique latines (jazz cubain, salsa, rumba…) sans dénaturer les œuvres originales, ni tomber dans l’appropriation culturelle des musiques du monde.
Une vraie gageure ! Son premier album « Via Havana » est disponible (La Café Label / Wagram Music).
En accord avec LA Café Label / Le Café de la Danse
Biographie
Organiser la rencontre entre la musique classique et la musique latine est un projet particulièrement ambitieux tant ces deux univers artistiques semblent s’opposer. C’est pourtant le pari fou qu’a relevé Joachim Horsley, pianiste américain virtuose et compositeur de musique de film.
« Via Havana », son premier album, est le résultat d’un travail colossal qui aura duré deux ans. Imaginez donc :apprendre et maîtriser les oeuvres les plus complexes et techniques du répertoire classique européen (Mozart, Beethoven, Saint-Saëns, Malher…), puis les arranger suivant les codes esthétiques des musique latines (jazz cubain, salsa, rumba…) sans dénaturer les oeuvres originales, ni tomber dans l’appropriation culturelle des musiques du monde. Une vraie gageure !
Cette réussite trouve ses origines dans le parcours aussi riche que varié de Joachim Horsley. Apprenant le piano dès l’âge de 5 ans, la musique classique fait rapidement partie de ses premières émotions musicales. S’il n’intègre aucune école de musique ou conservatoire, il développe son jeu chez lui à force de répétitions auprès de professeurs jusqu’à ses 14 ans. À partir de là, son adolescence sera marquée par la découverte du jazz auprès de célèbres musiciens parmi lesquels Chris Brubeck (fils de Dave Brubeck, à qui l’on doit des
standards du jazz tels que « The Duke » et « In Your Own Sweet Way ») et Samuel Adler (chef d’orchestre allemand célèbre pour son travail diplomatique de rapprochement entre l’Allemagne et les États-Unis après la
2nd Guerre Mondiale). Enfin, c’est de manière autodidacte qu’il apprend le langage de la pop, du rock et des musiques latines, étoffant par la même occasion un répertoire déjà riche en rencontres artistiques.
Multi instrumentiste (il maîtrise le piano, mais aussi la guitare, la basse et de nombreuses percussions), chanteur, auteur, compositeur, chef d’orchestre et arrangeur, Joachim trouve rapidement un débouché dans la
musique de film. Originaire de Boston, il fait ses armes à Los Angeles, composant pour les séries TV de Disney, et des longs-métrages tels que « Ouija », « The Possession », « Rabbit Hole » (avec Nicole Kidman, Aaron Eckhart et Miles Teller) ou encore le film documentaire « Great Migrations » diffusé sur National Geographic et récompensé du Documentary Emmy pour la musique ! Au total, Joachim a participé à plus de 30 courts et longs métrages.
Mais Joachim Horsley est aussi un prospecteur de sons, un musicien à la curiosité insatiable cherchant sans
cesse à sortir de sa zone de confort pour s’aventurer en terrain inconnu. S’inspirant de la musique bruitiste, il reprend le thème de « Psycho » (Alfred Hitchcock) de Bernard Herrmann aux couteaux, et celui de « L’Exorciste » (William Friedkin) de Mike Oldfield sur des tubes de glaces. En 2016, il se filme sur Youtube en train de réinterpréter la 7ième Symphonie de Beethoven (2ième Mouvement) façon rumba. C’est un carton planétaire. En quelques semaines seulement la vidéo fait le tour du monde, cumulant plus de 10 millions de vues (Youtube et Facebook) ! Une réussite totale pour une oeuvre de musique classique généralement confiné à un public de connaisseurs.
Fort de ce succès, Joachim poursuit sur sa lancée, convoquant tous les grands compositeurs européens, qu’ils soient allemand, français, russe, autrichien (du 18ième, 19ième ou 20ième siècle), sur tous les styles de musique latine (salsa, rumba, jazz cubain, musique vénézuélienne…). Un bouillonnant magma créatif qui le conduit jusqu’à son premier EP en octobre 2018 et la préparation de son premier live. Seul avec son piano – il joue sur Steinway – aidé par un system de boucles électroniques, ou en formation complète avec des musiciens européens et cubains, son spectacle se veut populaire et exigeant à la fois. Réconcilier les profanes avec les connaisseurs, voilà un nouveau défi pour cet infatigable créateur. Et à la lecture de toutes ces expériences, on comprend mieux l’intérêt de Joachim Horsley pour les challenges artistiques et ses prises de risques.
« Via Havana » n’est donc pas un simple album de reprises. C’est un projet aussi singulier qu’inclassable. Un concept musical ambitieux qui vise à réconcilier deux univers musicaux que tout semble opposer. À l’écoute de ces 10 titres, on redécouvre à la fois l’étonnante légèreté de la musique classique - trop souvent considérée à tort comme hermétique et élitiste – et la richesse harmonique et rythmique des musiques latines, loin des clichés parfois méprisants à son encontre. Les symphonies de Beethoven et de Chostakovitch se mettent alors à danser sur des rythmes de rumba, tandis que les oeuvres de Malher, Mozart et Rimski-Korsakov se pavanent sur des airs de latin jazz, offrant au public un rendez-vous unique entre l’Europe et la Havane.
Discographie
Via Havana - 15 février 2019
LA Café Label / Wagram Music
Anouar Brahem : oud
Klaus Gesing : bass clarinet, soprano saxophone
Björn Meyer : bass
Khaled Yassine : darbouka, bendir
For almost forty years and with a current discography spanning no less than 11 albums on the ECM label, Anouar Brahem has been constantly placing the age-old tradition of Arab music, whose emblem is his oud and its superb finesse, in different situations; not only does he set it in contrast against the free spirit and improvisation so typical of modern jazz, but also against the sophisticated harmonies of the erudite compositional tradition of the West and the refined forms of composition in other ancient cultural traditions from the Orient.
He has organized numerous cross-cultural encounters as well as juxtaposing different musical universes, thereby producing unsuspected potential in new but familiar-sounding combinations, something which had never been done before. In 2009, he recorded The Astounding Eyes of Rita, with a new group that included the soft melding of two sounds: the amazing fluidity of German-born Klaus Gesing on bass clarinet and the flowing notes on the bass guitar of Swedish-born Björn Meyer, to give a mixture of ascetic sophistication and sensuous lyricism so typical of oriental music, declined here by the music of the oud with its notes closely interwoven into the percussive background, played by Lebanese artist, Khaled Yassine. This group has had worldwide success, both for its rich repertoire and the subtlety of the varied instrumentation, and now, ten years later, it is not only totally up-to-the-minute and more enduring and creative than ever, but Brahem had made a secret pact with himself never to look back, and also vowed to renew his inspiration constantly by accompanying each new project with unusual orchestral combinations. So here, recognizing the lasting qualities of this group, he decided to add a new chapter to this story.
His main resource has been these years of shared experiences with the group, where their coherence and self-confidence has been increasing all the time. Anouar Brahem's new adventure includes the challenge of putting the idiom and specific qualities of the group before a new repertoire. Moreover, he also puts his own terrain through the prism of this particular sound universe once again, daring to cast a backward glance at his whole career by mixing a few familiar compositions of the quartet with a scattering of older themes from other projects. This leads to further exploration of the orchestral possibilities of a decidedly unusual instrumentation whose origins lie in an extremely up-to-date kind of cross-cultural chamber music. Within this hugely expansive space, Anouar Brahem and his fellow-musicians create a softly refined, graceful and dream-like world, borrowed as much from the contemplative oriental tradition as from jazz. The resulting music, rigorously demanding and poetic, moves constantly between modesty and sensuality, nostalgia and contemplation: it is a magnificently intimate spiritual journey to the heart of sound.
The Astounding Eyes of Rita
Album September 2009, ECM
2019 marks the tenth anniversary of the album. And the interest of the audience is still there, as if it was the first year.
With :
Anouar Brahem: oud
Klaus Gesing: bass clarinet
Björn Meyer: bass
Khaled Yassine: darbouka, bendir
A delightful new assembled by Tunisian oud master Anouar Brahem.
The combination of the bass clarinet with the oud suggests a link to Anouar's Thimar trio, but this East/West line-up often feels closer to the more traditionally-inclined sounds of Barzakh or Conte de l'Incroyable Amour. Klaus Gesing, from Norma Winstone's Trio, and Björn Meyer, from Nik Bärtsch's Ronin, are both players with an affinity for musical sources beyond jazz, and they interact persuasively inside Brahem's music.
A dance of dark, warm sounds, urged onward by the darbouka and frame drum of Lebanese percussionist Khaled Yassine. The album is dedicated to the memory of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish.
Souvenance
Music for oud
Album January 2015, ECM
This project is performed in 2 formations:
- the quartet
with Anouar Brahem (oud), François Couturier (piano), Klaus Gesing (bass clarinet ), Björn Meyer (bass)
- the quartet plus a string orchestra of 20 musicians
Probably Anouar Brahem has never gone so far into the balance between formal elegance and freedom of expression, lyricism and restraint, sensuality and asceticism, as he does here with this new repertoire which seems to ideally synthesize almost fifteen years of his personal and aesthetic quest for an authentic "common understanding" between Orient and Occident. Leading a brand-new Quartet, Brahem here revisits every facet of a musical universe that is at once melancholy and introspective in integrating his sensibilities and instrumental language—undeniably anchored in the Arab tradition—with the Impressionist, evanescent piano of colourist François Couturier, the pulsing sensuality of Björn Meyer's electric bass, and the misty, dreamlike, Nordic romanticism from the bass clarinet of Klaus Gesing.
As if to further emphasize the hybrid nature of his universe, here Brahem plunges his quartet for the first time into the sound-fabric of arrangements that are both sumptuous and minimalist, orchestrating a string-ensemble where the soloists (beginning with the melodic enchantments of the oud) are presented in an organic, voluptuous setting which is particularly stimulating. With ever more refinement in its melodic lines and at once contemplative and subtly narrative in its developments, the music contained in Souvenance possesses those qualities of self-evidence, naturalness and simplicity which are the hallmarks of works of genuine inspiration.
Other show already toured :
Blue Maqam
Album October 2017, ECM
Anouar Brahem: oud
Dave Holland: doublebass
Jack DeJohnette: drums
Django Bates: piano
Prestigious European tours in April 2018 and March 2019 :
Uppsala, Konsert & Kongress (Sweden) | Berlin, Boulez Saal (Germany) | London, Barbican (England) | Dublin, The National Concert Hall (Ireland) | Lyon, Auditorium (France) | Anvers, De Roma (Belgium) | Luxembourg, Philharmonic (Luxembourg) | Morges, Théâtre de Beausobre (Switzerland) | Köln, Kölner Philharmonic (Germany) | Paris, Paris Philharmonic (France) | Blagnac, Odyssud (France) | Zurich, Tonhalle (Germany) | Basel, Musical Theater (Switzerland) | Munich, Philharmoni (Germany) | Hamburg, Elbphilharmonic (Germany) | Lisbon, Gulbenkian Música (Portugal) | Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts (Belgium)
Biography
For almost forty years, Anouar Brahem, Tunisian composer and oud master, has been creating music both rooted in a highly sophisticated but ancestral culture and eminently contemporary in its global ambition. Anouar appears in many cross-cultural encounters, as well as developing entirely new links and similarities between styles and worlds whose potential closeness had never been considered until he discovered them. For him it was (and still is) a matter of highlighting the age-old Arab tradition of learned music, represented in its finesse by his oud, not only by confronting his instrument with modern jazz, but also with the sophisticated harmonies of the erudite compositional tradition of the West and refined forms from other ancient cultural traditions from the Orient.
His 11 albums on ECM, label acclaimed by the public and international critics alike (including Astrakan Café, Thimar, Le Pas du Chat Noir, Blue Maqams etc.), together with the triumphant success of his haunting music in concerts held in prestigious halls throughout the world, and his fellow-musicians including a remarkable selection of famous jazzmen such as Jan Gabarek, Dave Holland and jack DeJohnette are sufficient evidence to confirm Anouar's place as one of the most fascinating and inspirational artists in the current world of instrumental music.
His sensitive yet rigorous music constantly redefines a cleverly composite universe of poetry and culture, ever balancing between discretion and sensuality, nostalgia and contemplation.
Awards
De Klara's Classical Music Awards: "Best International CD - World" for Blue Maqams (Belgium, 2018)
Echo Jazz Award: "Best International Musician of the Year" for The Astounding Eyes of Rita (Germany, 2010)
Edison Award for Le Voyage de Sahar (The Netherlands, 2006)
Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik (German Record Critics' Award) for Thimar (Germany, 1998)
National Music Award (Tunisia, 1985)
Reviews
The album is at once an extension and an audacious departure from the tradition of the oud. Despite his formidable knowledge of the maqarnat, an ornate system of modes that anchors Arabic music, he seldom bases his improvisations directly on the maqams. His phrasing is pure and uncluttered, expressing itself through silence nearly as often as sound. ... Composed of elegantly flowing lines and somber, breathlike silences, the music shimmers with the overtones of the piano. ... Mr. Brahem bases several of the tunes on spare, broken chords, repeated in the childlike manner of Satie. Simple though they are, however, they contain beguiling Arabesques. The three musicians rarely appear at once, performing as a trio on only seven of the album's 12 tracks. For the most part, you hear duets - piano and oud, oud and accordion, accordion and oud. The musicians often double each other's lines, but seldom in unison, which enhances the music's intimacy while producing a floating, echo effect.If every band projects "an image of coummunity," as the critic Greil Marcus once suggested, then Mr. Brahem's trio - part takht, part jazz trio, part chamber ensemble - evokes a kind of 21st century Andalusia, in which European and Arab sensibilities have merged so profoundly that the borders between them have dissolved. The image may be utopian, but its beauty is undeniable.
Adam Shatz, The New York Times
Throughout the record, the musicians maintain an exquisite balance and make only subtle changes in tempo or tone. Their sense of melancholy is so natural and comfortable it's childlike. On this tune, "Leila and the Land of the Carousel" a waltzing rhythm and revolving melody suggest a girl on that classic joyride...When he quit the oud for a while and played the piano instead, Anouar Brahem recovered his powers of musical myth-making. On this record, he creates a fairy tale setting and ultimately a storybook ending. The accordion lays down sustained chords like lengthening shadows in a forest. The piano conjures low-key sunlight and offers overtones of reconciliation. And in the arabesque path of "The Black Cat's Footsteps," Brahem finds a way back home to his beloved oud and to the songbird inside.
"All things considered", USA - National Public Radio