A year after the acclaimed release of their first album "Legacy" and a tour of the biggest national jazz festivals to accompany it, the Emile Londonien group is offering a collector's edition of their tribute to Thelonious Monk, with the brilliant EP "Jazz Contenders" included as a bonus.
Beyond the group's musical influences (jazz, broken beat, house), this tribute showcases all the inventiveness that makes Emile Londonien the leading group in the renewal of the French jazz scene.
What does it mean to be a jazz musician today? This question is central to our purpose. We answer it very simply: heritage. Jazz is history. Political, cultural, social...
The Emile Londonien project is steeped in diverse and varied references, cross-references to different scenes, different eras, different philosophies.
In this vein, and in the purest jazz tradition, we wanted to pay tribute to the man who masterfully stood outside his time: Thelonious Monk. This genius pianist and composer left us a sublime body of work, a playground, an incredible laboratory.
Reinterpreting Monk, breaking his own codes, twisting his repertoire and confronting it with several decades of music that followed him, is both an honor and a message filled with admiration and emotion, the most beautiful tribute we can pay him. Without him, we might never have had the freedom of the Jazz we all play. He embodied freedom.
When we imagined taking over from a pioneer, his name seemed obvious. Monk. What other musician could we have tackled with the legitimate impoliteness that is ours? As a nod to what was his own.
"Don't talk about music, play it." Monk
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