{"product_id":"pierre-francois-blanchard_puzzled_2024","title":"#Puzzled","description":"#puzzled is the first album that pianist Pierre-François Blanchard has released under his own name, with clarinetist Thomas Savy as his comrade – and even soul brother. It is both a source and a delta: a place where everything converges without being reduced, unravels to begin anew, settles to be grasped and recomposed. - - Blurring any division between writing and improvisation, Pierre-François Blanchard has been traversing a landscape for twenty years that has taken him from classical to jazz, from theater composition to song. But it is his map of Tenderness that he unfolds here, illuminated by the beam of experiences and encounters that have marked his path. - - Four encounters, like cardinal points. First, Pierre Barouh, captain of the free course of the Saravah label, an offbeat figure in song whose inspiration and appetites Pierre-François and his piano have carried for five years. Then Archie Shepp, who integrated him into his quartet in 2017, and Raphaël Imbert, who made him one of the pillars of his exploratory jazz: two saxophonists whose breath carries a burn that is both ancestral and ever new. Finally, Marion Rampal, the essential friend, with whom Pierre-François sifts the gold of the Secret, intertwining Fauré, Legrand, Brigitte Fontaine, Debussy… or Barouh. - - From this desire for musical humanities, #puzzled draws its deep substance. That of a wanderer who strolls between worlds to better connect them – from the shimmering of early 20th-century French music to the colorist art of Duke Ellington, from the beauties of counterpoint to the harmonic combinations of Brad Mehldau. And it is no coincidence that this wordless diary has emerged from the parentheses imposed by confinement. “I am not afraid to say that it was a period of artistic jubilation. For three weeks, I wrote a piece a day. It marked for me a return to introspection, but also to the ability to transcend it and share it.” - - #puzzled feeds on this vital circulation between what Henri Michaux called the inner space and the outer space. A continuous breath that introspection shapes, that fever sometimes bristles, and to which Thomas Savy lends the neural precision of his clarinet. “Thomas, whom I met ten years ago, immediately expressed a very sensitive interest in what I was writing: I have not forgotten that signal. I knew he would honor these musics while shaking them up, turning the table when necessary.” - - Weaving the threads of memory, pure sensation, and language, Pierre-François Blanchard activates a whole game of correspondences and echoes between them, privileging the precision of touch over showy effects, the acuity of expression over any performance imperative. It is a singular beat that guides the listener, the pulse of those who have kept their amateur heart, far from academies and competitions. A beat that leads to the piece #puzzled, whose title resonates like a key, as it expresses in English the state of trouble and perplexity in the face of emotions whose nature eludes, disconcerts, and haunts us. A beat that dusts and becomes light in Lullaby for Freedom, concluding with a final release, a last tangent towards infinity. Towards the continuation of the story, perhaps? - - Richard Robert","brand":"Pierre-François Blanchard","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":58509065486680,"sku":null,"price":23688007.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0898\/4943\/0360\/files\/3521383473528.jpg?v=1789770843","url":"https:\/\/vinyles.com\/en-us\/products\/pierre-francois-blanchard_puzzled_2024","provider":"Vinyles.com","version":"1.0","type":"link"}