muzycy:
Gilles Grethen - Guitar
Vincent Pinn - Trumpet
Michel Meis - Drums
Gabriele Basilico - Double bass
Editor's info:
The young Luxembourg guitarist Gilles Grethen linked up with eleven strings.
An interplay between orchestra, orchestra band and the quartet alone.
Opulent sonority and esthetic surprises.
The music always remains sensual despite all the complexity.
"State of Mind" is a bold undertaking, because on his second album after last year's debut “Time Suite”, the quartet of the young Luxembourg guitarist Gilles Grethen linked up with eleven strings. “I wanted to have a larger line-up for the second album, although I first thought of a big band,” Grethen admitted. "But I always had the sound of strings in my mind when composing, because I come from classical music and I exclusively played that as a child and adolescent. The sound didn't let go of me, and I thought I had to do something with it; I even had some good ideas right away.” The combination of jazz and strings has a long tradition, and the album “Charlie Parker with Strings” is generally regarded as the beginning of this symbiosis. Grethen also has a preference for the silky sounds. "When all the strings play together beautifully, they act like one big instrument," he said. “This great sound that can come from it fascinates me.”
But only providing a jazz quartet with a few strings playing around it was out of the question for Gilles Grethen. The son of a music professor and a bassoonist also wanted to have room for improvisation – he wondered how he could he achieve it? “That was the big question I faced when I composed the music,” the guitarist said. "I then solved it in such a way that the strings do not play in the parts of the improvisation in which the quartet improvises. They play a major role in the themes and the composed parts, but the quartet comes to the fore in the improvised parts. It is always an interplay between orchestra, orchestra and band and the quartet alone, w....... więcej