{"product_id":"trio-besson-sternal-burgwinkel_surprise_2024","title":"Surprise !","description":"Some projects are the subject of long aesthetic ruminations, resulting in highly coordinated works that seal years of complicity, while others are born instead from pure chance, betting their necessity and the uniqueness of their message on the joyful epiphany of an unexpected encounter... Thus, this album with a programmatic title, which brings together French trumpeter Airelle Besson with two prominent figures from the young jazz scene across the Rhine, pianist Sebastian Sternal and drummer Jonas Burkwinkel, marks the official birth of a trio as unexpected as it is captivating. Its improbable, fortuitous, and delightfully tightrope-walking orchestral formula generates, over the course of the tracks, a music full of charm and audacity, distilling a lyricism of incredible freshness of inspiration through a kaleidoscope of continuously renewed refined forms. - - It all began more than ten years ago, in September 2013, when double bassist Riccardo Del Fra, then head of the jazz department at CNSM in Paris, set up a Franco-German orchestra for a several-week tour in tribute to Chet Baker, bringing together Airelle Besson and Pierrick Pedron on one side and Sebastian Sternal and Jonas Burkwinkel on the other. Immediately, the chemistry was palpable among the musicians, and at the end of this series of concerts, Airelle, Sebastian, and Jonas vowed not to stop there and to seek to extend this rich contact in one form or another. The opportunity arose just a few months later when, invited by the Münster festival for a sort of carte blanche to perform with musicians of her choice, Airelle proposed to the organizers the unprecedented experience of this trio with Sebastian and Jonas. The project was approved, a repertoire was quickly developed, skillfully mixing old compositions from each of the group members, and after a small rehearsal organized just a few hours before the concert, the trio, without a safety net, launched into the performance, driven simply by the pure pleasure of being together and the desire to surprise themselves. Experimenting in situ and in vivo with the unique dynamics and orchestral colors induced by this almost involuntary instrumentation, the group, with a spontaneous mix of expressive jubilation and collective formal audacity, delivered a performance so full of promise that what could have remained just a fleeting prototype transformed in the minds of each protagonist into a long-term common project, which gradually developed and refined over the years and concerts without ever abandoning that original grace based on the wonder of the encounter. - - It is this particular chemistry among its members, which has constituted the very identity of the trio since its inception, that this first album so beautifully named “Surprise!” masterfully highlights and subtly updates. Through a repertoire that is essentially the same as that of the original concert (only the title track “Surprise!” was composed afterward, specifically for the formation), Airelle on trumpet, in her very personal style, precise, economical, and pure, constantly striving for the purity of song; Sebastian on piano(s) and Fender Rhodes, bringing all the fluidity and discreet virtuosity of his playing to the service of the overall sound with a remarkable sense of architecture and spatial clarity; and Jonas on drums, infusing the trio with both its foundation and its spirit with a rare finesse in groove and punctuation — here they prismatically unfold a whole spectrum of moods and forms of incredible richness and diversity. For what strikes one when listening to this album is how the trio, while never losing coherence or personality, escapes any sense of system — each piece seeming a sort of prototype in which the group tests and experiments with the fragility induced by the vacant space of the double bass at its heart, multiplying ways to compose with this structural imbalance to give body and form to its most intimate song in always different ways. Placing a certain taste for melody at the center of its concerns (constantly magnified by the minimalist phrasing and the muted sound of Airelle Besson's trumpet), the trio thus multiplies approaches, moving from lyrical pieces with elegiac or even melancholic tones to playful exercises in style that are cleverly deconstructivist. Favoring very precisely drawn and arranged short forms with a true sense of drama based on the eloquence of understatement and the dynamics of space, “Surprise!” in many ways sounds, upon arrival, very contemporary, like a song album. In this context, both refined and intentionally leaning towards a form of simplicity, Airelle Besson, Sebastian Sternal, and Jonas Burkwinkel succeed in the challenge of constantly nourishing the group's sound identity with their voices without ever sacrificing their strong personalities. This is not the least of the surprises of this masterful album!","brand":"Trio Besson Sternal Burgwinkel","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":58552483414360,"sku":null,"price":23562810.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0898\/4943\/0360\/files\/3521383498095.jpg?v=1790203345","url":"https:\/\/vinyles.com\/en-us\/products\/trio-besson-sternal-burgwinkel_surprise_2024","provider":"Vinyles.com","version":"1.0","type":"link"}