Erik Truffaz - Clap! - Vinyl LP

2023

Thom Jurek

In 2020, film director Marie-France Brière approached trumpeter Erik Truffaz about composing music for Les îles de Napoléon, a documentary. Afterward, she requested that the trumpeter's quartet play a concert of themes from French cinema to close a film festival. The band enjoyed it so much that they asked Truffaz to approach Blue Note about releasing two distinct albums of cinema themes. Rollin' appeared early in the year, and Clap! appeared later. Co-produced by the trumpeter and bassist Marcelo Giuliani, the rest of the band includes percussionist Raphaël Chassin, keyboardist Alexis Anérile, and guitarist Matthis Pascaud. For Clap!'s eight selections, Truffaz allowed himself (and his sidemen) to conjure new musical and sonic images from the chosen themes, as well as the movies they accompany. The quintet weaves the new music and exploratory sounds and textures into complementary interpretations offering different, sometimes deeper associations for the themes through modern jazz and Truffaz's creative process.

Opener "Les Choses de la Vie" is the title theme to Claude Sautet's 1970 romantic drama and was composed by Philippe Sarde. The original scene saw Michel Piccoli's sportscar speeding through the bucolic countryside. The somewhat jaunty original has been reimagined. It's spectral and unwinds slowly, creating space as well as dynamic tension that hovers between Eastern and Western harmonies. When Truffaz solos, the tune's body unfurls gradually, encountering modal blues, post-bop, and ambient music à la Jon Hassell.

Veteran French singer/songwriter Bertrand Belin lends his striking baritone to Peter Ivers' "In Heaven" from David Lynch's film Eraserhead. While almost totally faithful to the original, the textured electronic backdrops, lounge guitar shuffle, and elegant trumpet add dimension while Belin completely inhabits the lyrics that knowingly and lecherously address the false promise of paradise on earth. "Theme de Camillel" is a duet between the trumpeter and Anérile's various keyboards. It's tender, lyrical, and bittersweet in representing the final conversation in a couple's romantic dissolution. It's speculative while reflecting tragedy. "Requiem pour un con - 'Le pacha'" was composed by Michel Colombier (who composed several selections here) and Serge Gainsbourg. A noir-ish, mutant, instrumental approach crosses brittle, funky jazz-rock driven by Pascaud's electric guitar before Anérile's Rhodes and Hammond B-3 frame the leader's lyrical muted trumpet solo. The inclusion of "Lonesome Cowboy" featuring outsider American singer/songwriter Stone Jack Jones in duet with Truffaz, is an outlier. Originally sung by Elvis Presley in the film Loving You, here it's rendered as a tender, lonesome country song with Truffaz's restrained horn hovering above Jones' fingerpicked acoustic guitar. Closer "L'Oiseau - 'Belle et Sébastien'" by Eric Demarsan and Daniel White, is the title theme to a French children's television series from 1965. Rendered softly and deliberately by a trio, Truffaz quotes from "Summertime" before articulating the theme, then adds lines and fragments from other standards -- "My Funny Valentine," "Shadow of Your Smile" -- amid brushed snare and a woody, languid, walking bassline. Along with its predecessor, Clap! makes for an indispensable project from Truffaz. His idiosyncratic, carefully articulated jazz approach to film music is distinctive and resonant and stands with his best work.

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LP Track Listing varies fromthis review