Insight

Description

Jef Giansily is a French pianist and composer, a student of Bernard Maury and a graduate of the Bill Evans Piano Academy. He has lived in Istanbul for twenty years, where he runs a music school. After a first album, Sketches, recorded as a trio in Turkey, and a second opus still unreleased, Jef Giansily temporarily returned to France to form an explosive quintet and record the impressive Insight at Studio de Meudon. It is dense, powerful and lyrical music, driven by an inner introspection that suggests a state of altered consciousness, where the power of music transforms our mood and our perception of time.
It is moving, contrasting and expressive music, imbued with great sensitivity and a spiritual approach. The eight tracks on Insight flow together beautifully, forming a fluid and coherent narrative suite. Influenced by the great jazz ensembles of the 1960s (Miles Davis's quintet or the Blue Note albums by Herbie Hancock or Wayne Shorter), Jef Giansily's music remains unique, personal and modern. It meets all the criteria: both very pleasant to listen to and incredibly demanding (with a rhythm section that is not afraid of time signature changes within the same piece).
Giansily often composes from a melody built around a bass line he has in mind: the writing of a theme is often linked to a rhythmic counterpoint. His impressive left-hand technique is carried by persistent ostinatos and propelled by the strength and groove of his rhythm duo: the virtuoso playing of bassist Apostolos Sideris and the dynamism of drummer Gautier Garrigue. If his collaboration with Gautier Garrigue is recent, his relationship with Apostolos Sideris is longstanding. This Greek bassist, now based in Paris, lived for many years in Istanbul after excellent musical studies in the United States, where he was a student of John Patitucci. Like a director carefully choosing his actors, Jef Giansily selects each musician for the singularity of his personality and his inner voice.
He met saxophonist Pierre Bernier in Paris, with whom the connection was immediate, and maintains a deep musical and personal friendship with the formidable American trumpeter Hermon Mehari, with whom he often performs in Istanbul. This quintet has one foot in the past of historic modern jazz ensembles, another in the future through innovative rhythmic forms, but both feet firmly anchored in the exciting and joyful present of contemporary acoustic jazz. Influenced by the great jazz formations of the 1960s (Miles Davis's quintet or the Blue Note albums by Herbie Hancock or Wayne Shorter), Jef Giansily's music is no less singular, personal and modern.
Music that ticks all the boxes since it is both very pleasant to listen to and terribly demanding. Jef Giansily always composes from a melody around a bass line he has in mind. His impressive left-hand playing is driven by obsessive ostinatos and propelled by the strength and groove of his well-known rhythm pair, Apostolos Sideris and Gautier Garrigue. A quintet that has one foot in the past of the great historic formations of modern jazz, as well as one foot in the future, through an innovative rhythmic formal perspective, but above all both legs in the present of a highly exciting and uplifting current acoustic jazz.