Eric Löhrer & Jean-Charles Richard – L[eg]acy

Saxophone/guitar duets aren’t very common in jazz (in contemporary classical music, I don’t know).

Coltrane himself, during his sessions with Kenny Burrell in ’56, ’57 and ’58 (reissued by jazzimagrecords on a luxurious double CD worth 3 quids & 6 pennies), only recorded one track with the guitarist as a duo: “Why Was I Born?”.

The question in itself is kind of stooped : why were they born?  Well, just to make good old-fashioned handmade music and delight our ears, té peuchère, cong! Ô pauvre ! – as they say in Marseille).

Well, Eric Löhrer and Jean-Charles Richard are kif kif (which — in Rabat, Algiers and Tunis, and even in Essaouira, where the Gnawas abound — means “ze same”), except that the two of them play guitar plus soprano or baritone sax, which is even rarer. So, do they do it to show off? ask my inquisitive neighbors. Well, NO! Are they trying to say, “Look how modern we are? Absolutely NOT! They just make very, very good, beautiful music, in homage to Steve Lacy (hence the title of the CD), which is a priori (and a posteriori too) a guarantee of thick, unadulterated quality.

Jean-Charles opens the first track, composed by Eric. And a soprano sound of unbelievable clarity and density penetrates your ears. Because to produce such spun soprano sounds, you need to have worked for hours and hours on your instrument, mastering tessitura and keywork, breath and fingering. I say this as a connoisseur, because I’ve owned a Conn bent soprano for a few weeks now, and I’m a long way from mastering it, including being able to produce a low Bb that sounds like anything other than the cry of a slaughtered halal pig. Models (Lacy & Liebman) and work are obviously Jean-Charles’ second and third names.

And what’s great is that in the studio – and I imagine on stage where the duo will be performing on 23/01/2025 at the Musée d’art moderne de Paris (Métro Trocadéro) at 7:30 pm.

And if you don’t cancel all your appointments to get there, I’ll never talk to you again! Do you hear me? NE-VER! – you don’t feel a drop of sweat: all the work is done upstream, so the performance isn’t laborious.

Some people will say, “We don’t give a damn about the technique, it’s the heart that has to do the talking!” OK, but when, as in the case of the recently late Martial Solal  — who was Jean-Charles’ father in law — terrifying technique is placed at the service of beauty, and therefore of the heart, instead of serving as a gateway to glory or to the rolling of mechanics and the showing of muscles, (a la James Carter, not to quote him, but too bad it’s done!) then we take off our hats, a tear of emotion in our eye and we say “Respect” and “Thanx for ze music!”. 

Well, I’m not going to carry on praising Jean-Charles, because the source of my admiration for his playing (both soprano and baritone) just can’t dry up.

Let’s talk about his six-string-wielding brother. He’s the author of two of the themes on this CD, and on the first, he’s content to play a little arpeggio behind his soprano counterpart.

A guitarist who doesn’t try to show off is pretty rare, don’t you think? Well, if you’re a fan of six-string solos, you’ll have to wait a long time before you get your fill. And then you’ll say to yourself: “Jeeeeezzzz! But this Eric Löhrer is a bit like the French Bill Frisell”. You’re not wrong: Eric has dragged his spats and his guitar through French chanson (with singer/pianist Jeanne Cherhal, for example), through world music with the guys from the Hadouk trio, and so on and so forth.

These experiences outside jazz-jazz have forged his unique personality and, to convince you of this, I recommend you listen to “Evidence“, the record on which he plays only Monk themes on… acoustic guitar. Nobody in the world (except, it seems, an obscure Japanese) has dared to do that! Here, then, Eric deploys with infinite gentleness – and a few rockish escapades – his harmonic science, his taste for melody and sound, and his implacable, impeccable sense of rhythmic placement, all without the slightest flashiness, the slightest guitar velocity, the slightest desire to show off.

All in all, this is a magnificent record on which compositions by Lacy and Monk, plus one by Cecil Taylor and a spiritual (Sometimes I feel like a motherless child), follow one another without the slightest hiatus, carried by a duo of astounding musicality that should delight the ears of any self-respecting music lover.

Line up:

Eric Löhrer – saxophones

Jean-Charles Richard – guitar

L[eg]acy was released by the label L’heure du loup, on December 6, 2024. It is a Hit Couleurs Jazz and its is a Selection on Couleurs Jazz Radio.