Thierry Maillard – New album “Alone”

To dare to attack these luminaries of the French song, alone … lonesome on the piano : Brel, Léo Ferré and especially the great Brassens, of which he very early knew to appreciate the finesse of the melodies at the height of the words. The musician with the rugbyman’s shape shows a strong desire to fight and a lot of tenderness.

He had to dare.

Thierry Maillard is well-placed on his legs, when he talks and is firmly seated when he overhangs the piano keys, to tackle fine, sometimes powerful, groove, surprising arrangements. The fingers fly, the melodies fly away to return better, like so many ritornelas, to get away again.

Jazz colors skilfully punctuated with chiseled harmonies. We liked this virtuoso pianist as much as musician, lately in trio in “Il canto delle Montagne” with André Cecarelli and Dominique di Piazza.

Listening to Brassens, Brel, Ferré in Jazz, it is delicious, like those departures on vacation of yesteryear, where on the road the father slipped a gray-beige tape in the car radio and that one took again in heart “Toi l’Auvergnat, qui sans façon… ”

Thierry Maillard made it into an aerated lace, while adding strength and vigor to certain pieces, for example by arranging, in an unexpected way, the most adulated love song, which is rediscovered here “Ne me quitte Pas – Jacques Brel”.

This French songbook is our standard. And right away we love it. From the first listening. At the second listening one begins to perceive the delectable arrangements.

Thierry Maillard confides: “These singers, as far as I remember, I always loved them, they always touched me. I have known their words by heart for ever, they are in me, they belong to my experience. Undeniably, they are part of my influences, more or less unconsciously. ”

A very personal record, a very beautiful homage to the height of these singers whose eternal nostalgia we have.

NB: Maxime Le Forestier had, a while ago, devoted a whole year tour with everything and only the Brassens’s repertoire: a great tribute very humble and touching. He said: “In Brassens, there is nothing to throw, everything is good!”

… In “Alone” it’s the same.