Song For Abbey

Description

Song for Abbey is a tribute to the immense singer, composer, poet, activist, and actress Abbey Lincoln, who marked the history of Jazz with her unique voice. To pay tribute is to acknowledge a debt. What do we owe Abbey Lincoln? She carved a spiritual and aesthetic path of growing richness throughout her career. Known as a moving and singular performer, particularly alongside Max Roach, she revealed herself later as the songwriter of an astonishing body of work: in the late '90s, she released a series of highly personal records that outline a major songbook, yet little covered. "Caged Bird," "Learning how to Listen," "The Music is the Magic"... wonders that Marion Rampal, intimately influenced by this great lady with a thousand lives and a thousand hats, celebrates alongside her musicians. To Lincoln's key or more confidential compositions, they blend covers illuminating her roots, her musical loves (Dylan, Oscar Brown Jr...), including Skylark, featuring guitarist Bill Frisell, and an original piece co-signed and sung with a musician who was a companion of Abbey, Archie Shepp. Brimming with melodies as well as free, wild, and joyful materials, Song for Abbey aims to be a gesture of living memory, invoking and sharing the spirit of a great artist, who considered Jazz as the most conducive form to what she called "the construction of character." "An astonishing voice." --- TÉLÉRAMA ---. "A voice that enchants everything it encounters." --- FIP ---. "One of the most beautiful voices of her generation brings to life the legacy of the sublime singer and songwriter Abbey Lincoln: chills guaranteed." --- JAZZ MAGAZINE ---. "Marion Rampal has a kind of restraint, elegance, and accuracy in her feelings that directly touches the hearts of the music lovers who listen to her." --- FRANCE INFO ---. "If there is a way to escape the seduction of Marion Rampal, it is unknown to us." --- TÉLÉRAMA ---. "I am 19 years old. My mother gives me a CD, Wholly Earth. The encounter is instant, profound. A sound, a spirit, a poetry. Discovered over the years, Abbey Lincoln's records accompany me. A fierce, unclassifiable body of work. Years go by; songs are written, I lose myself, I find myself, and, in the background, I always speak of a tribute to the great artist. And above all, there is the meeting with Archie Shepp, Shepp with whom Abbey Lincoln sang, with whom I have the chance to sing for almost fifteen years. Archie Shepp, just like Abbey Lincoln, is the craftsman of a songbook too little covered, too little studied in Jazz schools. Jazz is the work of great creators who had their singular worlds. It is alongside Archie, and by meeting Jason Moran that I perceive these issues of memory, and that it is our responsibility today to shed light on certain repertoires. Memory, invention, transmission. Moran tells me about a session with his students in Boston, around a composition by Kid Ory. The young people play the piece, then look up from the score. He seizes them: "Now look at yourselves! Look at that smile you all have! It was that smile that was noted in the score. That’s what Kid Ory wrote there, for you, today." They call it Jazz." --- Marion Rampal ---.