François de Roubaix

Description

Fred Pallem, leader of the most electrifying ensemble of the new world, Le Sacre du Tympan, brings the firepower of his own writing to bear; and eager for covers, he sparks new energy into those of his masters: André Popp, Burt Bacharach, Francis Lai, Jean-Claude Vannier... and François de Roubaix. “It was in 2008,” he recalls, “on the occasion of the Jazz à la Villette festival: the brief was to build a program around a film composer. We could have chosen Ennio Morricone. But François de Roubaix was a more original territory, still to be explored. Often, his image as a ‘pioneer of electronics,’ a ‘genius tinkerer,’ pushes his breathtaking melodic and harmonic splendors into the background. Even on piano, reduced to two lines, it remains staggering, a test that does not lie. Starting from the existing albums, I therefore transcribed by ear around twenty compositions. The more I delved into the intimacy of his music, the more I fell in love with it, especially his way of juggling tonality, his taste for parallel chords, his extraterrestrial modulations. de Roubaix is a formidable living language, influenced by all forms of popular music, jazz, folk traditions and pop.”