A young pianist from Strasbourg with a skillfully discontinuous style haunted by the ghosts of Thelonious Monk and Mal Waldron, Matthieu Mazué is above all a composer with great formal ambitions. Articulating improvised sequences and music composed in long and sinuous scores – referring to the lyrical abstraction of a certain New York modernity inherited from Tim Berne – he leads his trio, joined for the occasion by the American alto saxophonist Michaël Attias, in labyrinthine corridors in which new challenges arise at each and every turn. Angular melodies, surprising texture variations, unexpected rhythmic deviations, modular grooves progressing towards unstoppable paroxysmal dynamics: Matthieu Mazué's music is of the ones that open up new possibilities for jazz.

Concert proposed within the framework of a partnership between AJC and Pro Helvetia, in order to promote the diffusion of Swiss artists in France, and more particularly on the AJC network.

It is always a miracle when improvised music offers us to attend the beauty of a dialogue between musicians we can't possibly know in advance if they will be able to get along. Even if all of them have already had the opportunity to meet one another in other contexts in the past, this unprecedented encounter between the four great improvisers – of an extreme diversity of styles and expressions – places us in this kind of expectation: what will they 'say' to each other, that evening, in this peculiar orchestral configuration? What we can expect is that the quest will be less of a territory where to settle than of an ephemeral common ground to invent, and that the ability of concentration and listening of each one of them will ensure that the music passes through their distinctive bodies to incarnate in some unprecedented beauty.

Coproduction Jazzdor / Compagnie Rives