Wonderful World: Guillaume De Chassy and Daniel Yvinec

Photo Credits : Bénédicte Torres (Daniel Yvinec) and Pierre Lebouc (Guillaume de Chassy)

“The coming together of these worlds with that of these two adventuresome spirits has produced  the fine album, Wonderful World, one with restraint, one that is emotionally discrete, and one that is poetic.”
Le Monde

“A kind of cinematic extravaganza for the ear, Wonderful World is the second of three parts (the third and final one will surface where? London? Rio?), which takes a panoramic plunge into the history of the melodies of the twentieth century so it can bring back to the surface, to our times, all of those tunes’ basic elements.”
Magazine Musique

“Deft, impressionistic, moving . . . These two men have brought us an album of urban poetry.”
Jazzman

“This recording brings together every sweet nuance and provides a different kind of encounter with the cinema. Another way of telling the story of America and listening to America speak about its history, its dreams, its fantasies.”
Les Échos

“A somewhat strange and bizarre experience, like trying to find your way by groping around the wings in a theater when the stage lights have just gone out.”
Les Inrockuptibles

Photo credits: Bénedicte Torres (Daniel Yvinec), Pierre Lebouc (Guillaume de Chassy)

Musicians who can’t be categorized and are open to all musical experiences, Guillaume de Chassy and Daniel Yvinec share a sense of space and a penchant for taking risks which reveal their most basic interest: creating work that is poetic and resonant. Wonderful World (Bee Jazz /Abeille 2005) is their third collaborative effort. Number four was recorded in March 2008 in New York.

The Performers

After their album Songs beneath the Bombs, Guillaume de Chassy and Daniel Yvinec pay homage to American standards from the 1930s to the 1950s, with the voices of David Linx and Andy Bey helping to link together impressionistic footage of New York. De Chassy and Yvinec went up and down the streets of New York with a microphone, having passers-by remember Broadway show tunes (ones originally done by Sinatra, Garland or Nat King Cole) and sing them for the two Frenchmen. The pianist and bass player have created a world of urban poetry based on those voices they recorded, a world which is illuminated by images of New York by filmmaker Antoine Carlier.
The album Wonderful World has been widely acclaimed by critics and has won several awards. The performance has been seen throughout France at festivals and on stage. It has also been shown at New York’s legendary Knitting Factory.

The keys to Guillaume de Chassy’s unique and poetic world and his hallmark are verbal restraint, deep resonance, reverence for melody and harmonic sophistication. He is a former chemical engineer who listened to Schubert and Louis Armstrong and who later trained as a classical pianist. Self-taught at improvisation, he has been collaborating ever since with the best names in European and American jazz, such as Paolo Fresu, David Linx, André Minvielle, Mark Murphy and Rick Margitza. A musician with no set boundaries, he has collaborated with the classical pianist Brigitte Engerer and the video artist Antoine Carlier on his Wonderful World project, as well as with the Flamenco dancer Ana Yerno. Guillaume de Chassy is director of the jazz department at the Conservatoire de Région de Tour.

Self-taught bass player Daniel Yvinec was trained on classical oboe. He has worked all over the world with the biggest names in jazz, such as Mark Turner, Tania Maria, Maceo Parker, and with the biggest names in pop, including André Minvielle, Salif Keita, Cheb Mami and Francis Cabrel.

In addition, he is a filmmaker and artistic consultant for several diverse  recording projects Daniel Yvinec is a columnist for several music journals, including Magazine Musique and Jazz Magazine. He is also artistic director of the National Jazz Orchestra.

Performances and Recordings

Guillaume de Chassy and Daniel Yvinec are coming out with a new album in March 2009 called Songs from the Last Century, recorded in New York with Paul Motian and Mark Murphy.
Faraway So Close, (Bee Jazz / Abeille Musique), the new recording by Guillaume de Chassy has been done in collaboration with bass player Stéphane Kerecki and drummer Fabrice Moreau.
Program
The show lasts ninety minutes.
With a backdrop of voices and street sounds from New York City and rebroadcast live, the two musicians improvise while playing Broadway standards. Sequences of images of New York are projected on a screen at the back of the stage.

Cast

Guillaume de Chassy piano
Daniel Yvinec: bass
Antoine Carlier : video projection

Links to the artists’ website:
http://www.guillaumedechassy.com
http://www.yvinek.com

Links to audio clips of Wonderful World: http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=2017751804

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