Yannick Delez String 5tet - Hanging Gardens (2022) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

This theme, which you didn’t write yourself, is nevertheless most obviously integrated into your quintet’s repertoire. As is often the case in your music, there is a “perpetual phrase”, a deliberately unstructured flow of speech. It indeed evokes meandering, but without giving the impression of wandering.

In traditional jazz, the theme is a structured base on which the freedom of improvisation sets in during the choruses. However, one has the feeling in your music that the theme statement ostensibly avoids disclosing its structure, which is somewhat paradoxically revealed during the improvised solos. Is this a way for you to question or even hustle the jazz tradition while still respecting it?

Yes, that’s true. Coming from this tradition, I remain, in some respects, quite attached to it. It’s a very efficient system that has proved its worth for over a century! But it’s a structure that literally runs in a closed circuit. So yes, I often try to shake it up or even abolish it. That’s what I’m striving for in each new project: the opportunity to find new ways of conceiving the writing-improvisation structure, to make a tailor-made language.

In this piece, I have meaningfully disjointed and scattered the thematic elements vertically and horizontally. Not only because this piece (composed by Xavier Good) makes use of a very recognisable melodic sequence but also because it is a piece that I did not compose myself. This implies a different relationship towards the writing, with more freedom and playfulness.

TRACKLIST

1 Méandres
2 Gliding
3 Clärchen's Ballhaus
4 Birth of a Sylph
5 La Javanaise
6 Hanging Gardens
7 Helix
8 À Main Levée
9 Slandia



Thanks to the Original customer.