La fontaine et le gaucher
(The Fabulist and the Fabulous Musician)
Musical compositions by Pierrejean Gaucher - Text by Jean de la Fontaine
See the Tech Sheet
After a number of projects focusing on international music, I felt I wanted to explore new horizons, try out a different playing field. That must have been the image where it began, then I chose the text and the language.
Right away it was clear, to me at least and to my ear, that "The Fables" were the ideal material for this adventure. Just reading them is enough to prick up the musician's ear. Merely read aloud, they take on a singing quality because of the orchestration that follows them like a shadow, in the same way the music in cartoons does. Tex Avery and Frank Zappa are never far away. Comical, sardonic, or poetic, the fables provide every possible acoustic direction, without any stylistic constraints.
Because they are part of our collective unconscious from early school days (as far as the best-known ones go), I expect the audience member to recite the text to himself at the same time that he discovers the musical punctuation. This is really a form of interactive listening. And to (re)discover a certain fable in another language transports us elsewhere. Phonetics plays around with music.
Is it jazz, or isn't it? Who cares, really. I just tried to set down the notes that I heard behind each line, each syllable. I tried as well to organize them within themselves so they could tell the same story. In the same way that the animals in La Fontaine run around after each other, play hide and seek and often fight, so do the musicians and the narrator. The day will go to whoever can make himself best understood. But we always come back to the same morale: He who plays loudest does not always play the best.
Pierrejean Gaucher
To hear several passages of the CD, go directly to my Web site at the following address: www.pierrejeangaucher.com/extraitsfables.html
CD published, September 2005 - Nocturne (in the collection BD Jazz)
Musiclip: 41, rue de la Chine - 75020 - Paris. Tele: 01 43 15 05 63
Mail : musiclip@free.fr - site web : www.pierrejeangaucher.com
Biography
Pierrejean Gaucher - composer, guitarist
At first an ardent drawer, Pierrejean Gaucher didn't come to the guitar till age 16. After high school, he devoted his time entirely to music and studied for several months in 1981 at the Berklee school in Boston.
Once back in France, he directed all his energy into his group, Abus Dangereux. Becoming simply Abus in 1986,this guiding light of the French music scene produced eight albums and performed more than 400 concerts in France and abroad (Europe, South America, and Africa, for example).
A lot of illustrious musicians have crossed paths with this group: Randy Brecker, Robert Thomas Jr., Bobby Rangell, Stéphane Belmondo, Olivier Hutman, Etienne Mbappé, Benoît Moerlen. . . . The group also recorded for various artists (most notably with the rhythm section of the group Uzeb).
Spending much of his time writing for Abus and fulfilling various requests (theater, contemporary music, ballets, etc.) in 1987 he composed the first theme song for the TV show "Jazz 6."
In 1992 he founded The New Trio with drummer André Charlier and bass player Daniel Yvinec. Their two albums were hailed by reviewers as being among the most original works of the time. In 1994, at the request of French festivals, The New Trio became a quintet which rendered homage to Frank Zappa, who died a year earlier. This project, called "Zap Zappa" is still going strong and brings together audiences that have interests that go well beyond jazz. A "live" CD by the group came out in 1998. In 2000 he started The Phileas Band. The year 2001 also witnessed the birth of a duo with the guitarist Christophe Godin. After two years of work on The Fables of La Fontaine (CD to be published in autumn 2005), he has started up a new group, bringing together musicians and a narrator.
He is also very active on the teaching front. After having written for a long time for various music review magazines (Jazz-Hot, Guitar & Bass, to name a couple of them), he is currently teaching at the Didier Lockwood Music Center and at M.A.I in Nancy. He is author of various videos, one of which is about improvisation, as well as a work on musical intervals and triads. In 1999, he collaborated on a book on rhythm with pianist Daniel Goyone and also under his hand the book Guitarists was recently published by Outre Mesure (with Louis Winsburg and Pierre Bensusan).