Celebrating The Dark Side Of The Moon by Nguyên Lê / Michael Gibbs / NDR Bigband

Nguyên Lê / Michael Gibbs / NDR Bigband

Celebrating The Dark Side Of The Moon

Format: CD
Label: ACT music
UPC: 0614427957429
Catnr: ACT 95742
Release date: 31 October 2014
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Label
ACT music

UPC
0614427957429

Catalogue number
ACT 95742

Release date
31 October 2014

""Gibbs comes with a lot of new arrangements, improvisations and timbres. This makes the album fascinating to listen." "A very surpising production and the kind of killer album everyone is looking for.""

Music emotion, 01-12-2014

Album

Artist(s)

Composer(s)

Press

About the album

March, 1973... A quartet known for its psychedelic inclinations delivered a fortress of an album: The Dark Side of The Moon was a musical UFO featuring the most advanced technology of the period, a stratospheric record which mirrored society and our errant human ways. Pink Floyd was about to write an essential chapter in rock history and enjoy planetary fame; even today, their album is still one of the greatest sellers of all time.
The idea behind a new reading of it came from ACT- director Siggi Loch and NDR producers Stefan Gerdes and Axel Dürr, whose radio Big Band is no secret for jazz fans. Their idea may have been a bold initiative, but the project implied an orchestra capable of linking tradition with today, and it looked to have every chance of succeeding because it would involve not only Michael Gibbs – composer, arranger, old friend –, but also, joining forces with them, Nguyên Lê, a guitarist known for jumping stylistic borders. The whole idea, finally, seemed a very good one indeed...

Nguyên Lê is a magician; his art reveals itself not only in his own compositions but also in his celebrations of the music of the past, where his approach to the latter resembles sculptures made of new clay. Remember Purple, his tribute to Jimi Hendrix, or more recently his Songs Of Freedom and its evocations of rock's greatest moments. He's a flamboyant guitarist and, while he shows courteous deference to his source material, he has always expressed the full diversity of an imaginary world engendered by his own history, that of a nomad, self-taught virtuoso: his music feeds on influences embracing all continents, and is painted with colours drawn from jazz, rock, and a kind of world fusion permeated with light.
Celebrating The Dark Side Of The Moon demonstrates that the imagination of Nguyên Lê has indeed risen to power; it guides us down other, more personal paths, and is inhabited by that musical "brotherhood" which has never left him all these years. It's as if the ecumenism of song was part of his creative DNA.

And it's true that for the guitarist there was never any question of locking himself away – due to respect in excess – inside the constricting framework of the Floyd's repertoire:
With its gem-like allure, it's obvious that any enterprise which consists solely of a mechanical re- reading of the record would be taking a great risk: the dangers are insipidity and an absence of soul. But Nguyên Lê is one whose aim is true – straight to the heart – and he belongs to those who've learned to let their innermost beings speak out like a passport for the emotions. For a full hour, he gives new shapes to ten compositions in dual complicity with the NDR Big Band, a seasoned formation whose warm textures, uplifted by the orchestrations of Michael Gibbs, elegantly succeed in drawing us away from the original intention of the music without betraying it in the least. Together, they strip the seminal music of its progressive clothes to dress it in another setting, that of an idiom whose dominant sensibilities, those of jazz, come to full bloom in the comfort of the orchestral motifs provided by the NDR Big Band. And it's not even a certainty that the ontological questionings which haunted the texts of Roger Waters and his comrades – money, death, old age, madness – hold much importance in this contemporary celebration.

The essential seems to lie elsewhere: in a more timeless translation of their aesthetic, and in the liberation of energies. The arrangements – three written by Gibbs himself, the others by the guitarist – provide choice settings for inspired soloists and allow other compositions to emerge as natural extensions of the original opus. Nguyên Lê's quick-tempered playing, armed with those fiery, oriental accents we've learned to love, can also safely rely on some trusted guests: Jürgen Attig, Gary Husband, or Youn Sun Nah, a purveyor of magic spells whose chalice brims with magnetic grace.
Celebrating The Dark Side Of The Moon is no simple tribute to a record which made history. It fervently expresses the re-creation – exempt from all imitation – of a score which you can hear in filigree. This is a palimpsest. The writing can still be (re)read, with warm hues forged by respect for the original matrix and the multiple expressions of its identity. Like a principle of Life.

Artist(s)

Nguyên Lê

'Nobody plays guitar like him,' wrote the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper about Nguyên Lê; the very first exclusive ACT artist ever. Born of Vietnamese parents in Paris in 1959, Nguyên Lê is one of the most versatile and independent guitarists in the world – going far beyond the bounds of jazz music and shaped by the most varied of influences such as Asian music, modern jazz, fusion or classic rock. Gitarist Ngyuên Lê is a very particular jazz musician for a number of reasons: Even though he lives in Paris where he was born in 1959, he feels very connected to the cultural background of his Vietnamese family. He furthermore is self taught and just started to play the drums by...

"Nobody plays guitar like him," wrote the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper about Nguyên Lê; the very first exclusive ACT artist ever. Born of Vietnamese parents in Paris in 1959, Nguyên Lê is one of the most versatile and independent guitarists in the world – going far beyond the bounds of jazz music and shaped by the most varied of influences such as Asian music, modern jazz, fusion or classic rock.
Gitarist Ngyuên Lê is a very particular jazz musician for a number of reasons: Even though he lives in Paris where he was born in 1959, he feels very connected to the cultural background of his Vietnamese family. He furthermore is self taught and just started to play the drums by the age of 15, but soon switched to the guitar.
He entered the music business in 1983 playing with the Afro-Caribbean band “Ultramarin“. His impressive career really kicked off after joining the French “Orchestre National du Jazz” in 1987. Already his first solo albums – released at the beginning of the 90es – attracted a large and still growing audience.
Lê had his German debut in collaboration with the Jazzpãna-Ensemble in 1993. It was exceedingly well received by critics and fans. Newspaper “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung“ was even raving about his playing: „There is no other human playing the guitar like Lê!“. ACT-boss Siggi Loch just felt the same and Nguyên Lê became his label’s first exclusive artist.
To this day, Lê released no less than 12 albums on ACT. He has played with almost every important and famous European or American jazz artist. He is a regular guest to WDR Big Band and has founded several bands and ensembles, whereof trio E_L_B (with Peter Erskine und Michel Benita) and Lê’s “Jimi Hendrix Project” are the most successful and well-known.

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NDR Bigband

Youn Sun Nah

YSN is well regarded for her remarkable vocal prowess. The Korean jazz vocalist’s ability to present each song in her own unique style filled with emotion and passion has consistently captured her audience in attentive silence, ending with roaring appreciation. The songstress traverse the vocal spectrum effortlessly to the extent where she’s not just another vocalist, she’s a musical instrument. In 2005, French magazine “Le Monde” described her as “a UFO touching the universe of jazz with a magnificent voice and passionate originality”. Growing up in a musical family where her father was a conductor and her mother a musical actress, music has always been in her life. YSN eventually began her own musical journey and made her first debut at the tender age of...

YSN is well regarded for her remarkable vocal prowess. The Korean jazz vocalist’s ability to present each song in her own unique style filled with emotion and passion has consistently captured her audience in attentive silence, ending with roaring appreciation. The songstress traverse the vocal spectrum effortlessly to the extent where she’s not just another vocalist, she’s a musical instrument.
In 2005, French magazine “Le Monde” described her as “a UFO touching the universe of jazz with a magnificent voice and passionate originality”.

Growing up in a musical family where her father was a conductor and her mother a musical actress, music has always been in her life. YSN eventually began her own musical journey and made her first debut at the tender age of 23 at a joint concert collaborating with the Korean Symphony Orchestra. The performance was her stepping-stone into the Korean music scene.

Though YSN was making waves in the Korean music scene, she decided to move to Paris in 1995 to study jazz and chanson. Striving for only the best, she enrolled herself into the CIM Jazz School, one of the oldest jazz schools in Europe. She also studied at the National Music Institute of Beauvais as well as the Nadia and Lili Boulanger Conservatory.

At the turn of the millennium, she founded her first Parisian quintet, while it has won a special jury prize at the national jazz competition of the Festival de la Défense. The first of a long list (Jazz Vocal Award from the Académie du Jazz in France, Korean Music Award, Echo Award in Germany …) to one that will be even decorated in 2009 with the insignia of “Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres” by the French Ministry of Culture. In 2013, the Korean government has awarded her with a special prize for her contribution to popular culture and the arts.

Many venues and festivals across the globe also recognize YSN’s talents. She has been invited to perform at numerous events such as Blue Note Jazz Festival, Rochester International Jazz Festival, Jazz at Lincoln Center (USA), Jazz in Marciac, Théâtre du Châtelet, Jazz à Vienne, Printemps de Bourges (France), Montreux Jazz Festival, Verbier Festival, Cully Festival (Switzerland), Festival International de Jazz de Montréal, TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival (Canada), Enjoy Jazz Festival, Women of the World Festival, Klangvokal Musikfestival (Germany), Heineken Jazzaldia San Sebastian (Spain), Rome Jazz festival (Italy), Pori Jazz (Finland), Mai Jazz Festival (Norway), Festival de Wiltz (Luxembourg), Java Jazz Festival (Indonesia), Penang Island Jazz Festival (Malaysia) and Jarasum International Jazz Festival (South Korea), among many others.

Youn Sun Nah’s current projects are her collaboration with Swedish guitarist Ulf Wakenius as a duo and also as a quartet when they are joined by the French accordionist Vincent Peirani and the double bass player Simon Tailleu.

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Michael Gibbs

Gary Husband

Jürgen Attig

Jörg Achim Keller (conductor)

Composer(s)

Nguyên Lê

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Roger Waters

Richard Wright

David Gilmour

Press

"Gibbs comes with a lot of new arrangements, improvisations and timbres. This makes the album fascinating to listen." "A very surpising production and the kind of killer album everyone is looking for."
Music emotion, 01-12-2014

"In two words: The Slap!"
Jazz Magazine Jazzman (FR), 04-11-2014

"The remarkable thing is that eventually, the album persuaded me to forget the original."
The Telegraph, 03-11-2014