Emile Parisien and Vincent Peirani, recipients respectively of the Django Reinhardt Prize for Best Musician of the Year in 2012 and 2013, come together for a previously unreleased duo on record that fully lives up to expectations. Let them speak for themselves: “Our meeting dates back to November 2009, when Daniel Humair invited us to share the stage with him. Following that concert, he decided to create his Sweet & Sour quartet, “our” quartet, as he likes to point out. It has now been almost three years that we have been touring with this band. Strong bonds have been forged, especially between the two of us. Indeed, the space Daniel leaves us has allowed us to “find” ourselves both musically and personally. Following these quartet concerts, many people came to ask us whether we played together as a duo. In 2012, Sweet & Sour was invited to play at the Jarasum Jazz Festival in South Korea. Jae Jin In, the festival director, also suggested that we play as a duo in a club. It was on that occasion that we played our first concert and the machine got going. Siggi Loch, the head of ACT, wanted to push this story further and asked us to record together for him. At that point, we already had a repertoire that we had had the chance to play once or twice after Korea. While being aware of that, he suggested that we draw from Sydney Bechet’s repertoire, the one through which he discovered jazz. Quite a symbol! Far from being Bechet specialists, we immersed ourselves in his work, which is truly important, immense, even endless!!! From those few months of research came a few pieces that we tried to adapt to the duo and its story. Thanks to these songs, we were able to broaden our sonic palette and tell other stories. Creating this repertoire plunged us into a state of euphoria and lightness, blending our influences ranging from popular music to early 20th-century composers, not to mention jazz of course, and even world music. All these elements combined echoed a state of mind, a time when people were having fun, carefree, curious, happy to discover new things. In other words: La Belle Époque!”