Ysaura Merino

© Paul Bourdrel

Laurent Cugny

© Noé Cugny

Laurent Cugny Tentet

© Noé Cugny

ALBUM RELEASE CONCERT

LAURENT CUGNY TENTET

When the crème de la crème of French jazz comes together on stage!

Pianist, conductor, arranger, author… it is difficult to sum up Laurent Cugny’s long and prestigious career in a few words. Director of the Orchestre National de Jazz from 1994 to 1997, he played and recorded with Gil Evans, directed the Lumière big band for twenty years, but also the Gil Evans Paris Workshop from 2014 to 2018, and is the author of numerous books on jazz.

A great master of conducting large ensembles, he is now bringing together a new orchestra, an all-star group of French jazz musicians, to play a new repertoire. His compositions will be mixed with those of Joni Mitchell, Lennon-McCartney, Michel Jonasz, Josef Zawinul, Miles Davis or Duke Ellington, in an unusual instrumentation including three electric keyboards and two drums. And as usual with Laurent Cugny, a large part is left to improvisation and the initiative of the musicians, for a musical explosion that will be remembered for a long time.

The tentet, which has just recorded the album ‘Zeitgeist’, will give the festival audience the first glimpse of this new opus. The promise of an exciting and memorable closing night of the festival!

Laurent Cugny: keyboards, arrangements / Pierre de Bethmann: electric piano Fender Rhodes / Laurent Coulondre: Hammond B3 organ / Manu Codjia: guitar / Jérôme Regard: double bass / Stéphane Huchard, Antoine Paganotti: drums / Sylvain Gontard: trumpet / Martin Guerpin: soprano saxophone / Stéphane Guillaume: bass clarinet

1st part: YSAURA MERINO

Attention talent!

The trumpet player Ysaura Merino is part of this young generation of musicians to follow closely. An accomplished sidewoman, she is regularly solicited by the big bands in Lyon (The Very Big Experimental Toubifri Orchestra, Bigre!, The Amazing Keystone Big Band…). But it is now as a leader that she presents herself.

Her quintet, formed in 2019, includes the virtuoso guitarist Loan Buathier, the eclectic pianist Pierre-Louis Varnier and the talented Baptiste Archimbaud on double bass and Zacchary Leblond on drums.

The group will present a repertoire of standards and original compositions with influences from Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, John Scofield and Ambrose Akinmusire.

Ysaura Merino: trumpet / Loan Buathier: guitar / Pierre-Louis Varnier: piano / Baptiste Archimbaud: double bass / Zacchary Leblond: drums