Pierrick Pédron – The Shape Of Jazz To Come (Something Else)

By adapting “The Shape Of Jazz To Come (Something Else)”, a seminal album recorded by Ornette Coleman, saxophonist Pierrick Pédron makes Danton’s motto his own: “De l’audace, toujours de l’audace, encore de l’audace”! (Boldness, more boldness, always boldness!)

When, in 1959 – the year Miles Davis recorded “Kind of Blue” – Ornette Coleman (then aged 29) entered the Atlantic studios, he may not yet have imagined – although he was aware of it! – that he was about to radically change the course of jazz. Which would really happen a year later with “Free Jazz – A Collective Improvisation”.

However, for these key recordings, the innovative and visionary violist/composer had totally excluded an instrument that was the straitjacket of harmonies: the piano!

…which is also featured on Pierrick Pédron‘s “The Shape Of Jazz To Come (Something Else)”!

With his accomplices – Carl-Henri Morisset (piano), Thomas Bramerie (double bass) and Elie Martin-Charrière (drums) – the alto saxophonist and composer – under the watchful eye of Laurent Courthaliac (arranger) and Daniel Yvinec (artistic direction) – launches a major challenge, which could be at once a gage, a risk and an unconscious provocation: to revisit an epochal monument.

While the presence of a pianist (in this case C-H. Morisset) in place of Don Cherry’s trumpet may seem incongruous in terms of respecting the revolutionary spirit of the original recording, it takes all the talent of the leader – and a certain nerve! – to breathe new life into these now iconic and historic themes.

Six compositions that provide fertile ground for developing and exploiting all the immense qualities of this assemblage of soloists, as if touched by the grace of a jazz that is already beyond modernity and contemporaneity.

Intense, energetic, frenetic, powerful. That’s how we might describe this encounter between a piece of jazz history and a luminous quartet visited by the spirit of the great master Ornette.

For there’s something mystical about the richness of Pierrick Pédron‘s interventions, the opulence of his muscularly improvisatory delivery and his ethereal, inspired phrasing. All backed by a solid rhythm section led by C-H. Morisset, imperial in his efforts to deconstruct themes for better melodic reconstruction.