The current Karsten Jahnke “Jazz Night” in the Prince Regent Theater: Not only because with the accordionist Vincent Peirani and his close friend, the saxophonist Emile Parisien, the two currently most successful French jazz musicians are guests, who are also in Germany thanks to their connection to the Munich act label and many appearances with Michael Wollny or Joachim Bold are very popular. But also because they compete with three casts and bring seven other top-class artists with them. First play Peiranis jokerthen Emiles Louiseand finally the two in a duo in the finale.
You can expect three very different musical colors. Peirani’s new project joker is a trio that he founded for two NDR concerts, where he was supposed to and was allowed to try something completely new: For the first time, Peirani dealt explicitly with rock music and expanded the sound of his instrument with electronic effects. Paradoxically, even with hardcore covers like Marilyn Manson’s “This Is the New Shit” or “Copy of A” by the Nine Inch Nails a music that is all the more poetic, focused on sound images and turned away from virtuosity.
Which mainly has to do with the fact that in the Italian (but also Paris-based) guitarist Federico Casagrande and the Israeli drummer Ziv Ravitz, who has lived in the USA for a long time and has now also moved to France, he has found two comrades-in-arms who, like him, have one thing in common have a strong jazz background, but also have a broad musical horizon and a special soft spot for rock and electronic music.
Similarly, the Sextet Louise represents a new step for Emile Parisien: A nod to the American roots of his jazz passion: “It was time for me to return to the source that gave me my love of jazz in the first place,” he says. That’s why not only two of his closest French companions play with him here, the guitarist Manu Codjia (also known to many Munich residents since he won the BMW Welt Jazz Award 2015) and the pianist Roberto Negro, but also with the bassist Joe Martin, the trumpeter Theo Croker and the drummer Nasheet Waits also three American cracks.
Croker and Martin met Parisien on the Blue Note Tribute Tour with the 2018 Jazz Animals know, from which a special musical connection and friendship developed. Croker has since become perhaps the brightest new star among jazz trumpeters with his own projects. Their paths crossed at festivals with Waits, one of the outstanding, most sought-after drummers of our time, and his playing shaped the band rhythmically.
With the final duo you can experience once again in pure culture what the two have amazed and conquered their audiences at many concerts in the Unterfahrt and in the other important clubs. Peirani’s revolutionary accordion playing that took his instrument’s tonal possibilities to a new dimension. And Parisien’s unrivaled mastery of the soprano saxophone, which he chose as his main instrument in the tradition of Sidney Bechet and not as a second or third instrument like almost all other saxophonists.
Emile Parisien & Vincent Peirani, Fri., May 12, 8 p.m., Prinzregententheater, Prinzregentenplatz 12, www.theaterakademie.de