DESCRIPTION:
Taken from the album: B2BILL - A Modern Tribute to Bill Evans
Extrait de B2BILL - A Modern Tribute to Bill Evans
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© Copyright: 2013 Bonsaï Music
℗ Production: 2013 Bonsaï Music

B2BILL is a very modern tribute to Bill Evans, which includes at then same time a selection of the most famous Bill Evan's songs revisited by the trio such as (Peri's Scope, B Minor Waltz, Five, Funkallero, Twelve Tone Tunes...) & original songs dedicated to and inspired by this Jazz giant.

Emmanuel Bex, Nico Morelli & Mike Ladd will tour with this project in France & Europe, starting with a first concert in Paris at the New Morning, next October 8th.

Presentation of B2BILL by Ben Sidran
It is difficult to describe this collection of musical moments dedicated to pianist Bill Evans. One can say, for example, that the interplay of Hammond organ and acoustic piano is not only brilliant but, in the way it is done here, totally original. Yet this, as you will hear, just barely begins to scratch the surface. This music is not without precedent. "Funkallero" for example, reminds one of the rhythmic drive of Evans' "Conversations With Myself," with a kind of twisted Medesky-Martin-and-Wood grooved but sideways approach.

Having said that, in many regards this music is suis generis, without compare. It comes from the worlds of jazz, of rap, of Ravel and the impressionists, of history, of poetry, of crystal clear moments that make you catch your breath. It sings in a voice familiar but somehow so far below the surface that shapes, shifting -- what did he say? -- suggest not what you heard but what you didn't hear.

What this music does is swing and sob, reaching into those personal spaces that the Italians have known about for centuries and to which the Americans, who invented the Hammond B3 organ to rain down praise upon the Lord, have given a modern voice: the human condition considered from the feet up rather than the skies down. Piano and organ: wood and wire, tubes and motors, swirling levels of art and conscience: marvelous!

The three men at the heart of this project -- Mike Ladd, from the USA, Emmanuel Bex from France, and Nico Morelli from Italy -- create something very new from their respective traditions. Ladd, born in Boston, attended several hip schools, collaborated with jazz artists, remixed pop records, published in literary magazines and has established himself as a new voice of the people with artists as diverse as Vijay Iyer and DJ Spooky. Bex, a gifted classical pianist, won prizes and awards as a young boy and, discovering jazz, started touring with remarkable players of the previous era, Barney Willen, Aldo Romano; upon discovering the Hammond Organ, he took his place in a long line of pianists who found their voice in the drawbars and stops of this mythical instrument. Morelli studied piano in Rome, Boston, New York and Paris, worked with members of the jazz avant-grade, including Paul Bley and Steve Lacy, as well as Italian bebop warriors Flavio Baltro, Enrico Rava and Roberto Gatto; his sound is profound. Together, they are like a perfect storm, bringing together the past and the future into a swirling present tense.

Bill Evans too was a bridge between two worlds, between Miles Davis and classical composers like Satie and Debussy. Of course, Davis knew of the romantics, the serialists, the impressionists. But Bill Evans brought it all home, made it real, embodied the concepts in a bebop vocabulary that could not be denied. He may well be the reason that the best selling jazz album of all time, Davis' Kind of Blue, is the best selling jazz album of all time.

Bill Evans was a romantic -- he loved the harmonic rubs, those little "tortured sounds" that delivered bebop into the modern era -- but at heart he was a groove dog of the first order. You have to be to play this music.This is the mystery of where the primitive meets the avant-garde, the street meets the steeple, the sky meets the ground. This is the space that is captured so beautifully on this recording. (Ben Sidran -- Décembre 2012)