Yessai

Description

YESSAÏ is the first solo album by the French-Armenian pianist and composer Yessaï Karapetian.
After remarkable live performances with Guillaume Perret (A Certain Trip, 12 Levers de Soleil) or within the trio ONEFOOT - a pioneer of a ‘next gen’ French jazz (relisten to Mektonized) -, Yessaï Karapetian is now flying on his own, determined to make sparks.
Magnetic and powerful, the 9 compositions of the album grab you as much in the gut as in the cortex. Often fascinating, sometimes bewildering, but always virtuosic ‘pieces’ of art. 9 tracks supported by a high-level dream team, surrounding the musician in the studio and live. On bass, we find Marc Karapetian, the leader's brother, who also records and performs with the incomparable Tigran Hamasyan. Théo Moutou is on drums, while we savor the notes of guitarist Gabriel Gosse (a genius found with Christian Scott, Eddy de Pretto, and Katerine). Saxophonist Mounir Sefsouf completes the cosmopolitan and iconoclastic formation imagined by Karapetian. Five young French musicians with a conquering spirit, from Armenia, Guadeloupe, Réunion, and Algeria, met on the benches of CNSMDP, for whom music and humanity are one.
In this first opus, Yessaï Karapetian offers the public an intense, coherent, almost spiritual work, between shadow and light, imbued with beauty and melancholy. ‘It took me 6 years to find the ideal formula,’ confides the pianist. ‘I tested dozens of formations, from trio to nonet; electric and acoustic instrumentations, ranging from instruments from traditional Armenian music to purely electro productions. It haunted me until I found the form and the ideal accomplices. As is often the case, the problems and blockages are in my head. I have to fight my own demons, my ‘doppelgängers’ (a theme explored in the album's first single, Doppelganger10) to be able to free myself and move forward. When I dare to face them, the solutions miraculously reveal themselves. This album documents this process.’