Let Them Cook

Description

On the occasion of its 20th anniversary, Emile Parisien’s Jazz quartet presents "Let Them Cook" Accidents last only a few seconds; sometimes a few minutes. This one has lasted 20 years. Two decades that Emile Parisien’s quartet has been extending this improvised jam session in a club, at the end of which the four musicians looked at each other, as if stunned by this instant collective coup de foudre, aware that they had given birth to... something. The ground was viscerally jazz, not the seeds planted. Classical or contemporary music, rock, electronic, chanson, everything went into the ears of these four. Mingus or Schoenberg, same fight! That hasn’t changed: tearing off labels, smashing barriers, shaking up the codes, their roadmap is as if carved in stone. As is this obsession with storytelling. “The quartet’s central axis from the very beginning has been to tell stories,” insists the saxophonist. A breath of fresh air blows through this Let Them Cook. A few seconds are enough to recognize the house style, but a house style firmly rooted in 2024, not 2004. A turning point validated after a concert in Sweden, at the end of the tour for their 2018 album, Double Screening. That night, the four musicians agreed to try moving away from all-acoustic and incorporating electronics. Emile Parisien’s quartet succeeded in its bet because these electronic punctuations never pollute its DNA, but on the contrary stimulate it.