"What this Nice-born Parisian coaxes out of the piano accordion is something the likes of which has never been heard before. You can tell it is a future legend who is playing here!" – Süddeutsche Zeitung.
The French accordion player, singer and composer Vincent Peirani was born on 24.4.1980 in Nice. At the age of 11 he began playing the accordion, initially classical music. As a teenager he already won numerous international awards. At 16 he discovered jazz and soon took up the study of jazz in Paris. At the beginning he faced scepticism with his accordion and his classical training, but he quickly convinced the critics with an entirely new way of looking at the instrument, made a name for himself in France's jazz scene and was soon playing with the creme de la creme of French jazz, the likes of Michel Portal, Daniel Humair, Renaud Garcia Fons, Louis Sclavis and Vincent Courtois. Parallel to that he pursued many of his own projects, drawing from the widest range of genres – from jazz, chanson and world music through to classic and even heavy rock. Since 2011, Peirani has been playing regularly in the quartet of the Korean singer Youn Sun Nah, the most successful female jazz artist in France in recent years. Through this engagement he also made the acquaintance of Swedish guitarist Ulf Wakenius and ultimately the boss of the ACT label Siggi Loch. Peirani played on the Wakenius album "Vagabond" recorded in February 2012, also astonishing and enthralling live audiences everywhere. "Thrill Box" came out in May 2013 and was Vincent Peirani's first album as a leader – star-studded with pianist Michael Wollny, bassist Michel Benita and saxophonists Michel Portal and Émile Parisien. The album showcases the entire wealth of facets of Peirani's musical influences, and reveals more impressively than ever before what an intelligent and artful composer he is, and what a masterful and profoundly musical instrumentalist and storyteller.

The French jazz scene has a vitality, an originality and a do-it- all and do-it-anyway mentality about it right now. It is French musicians who are blazing the new trails for contemporary European jazz. There is a wonderful open-mindedness towards all musical cultures, genres and tendencies; and yet French musicians also give off the sense of having a proper grounding in their own tradition. A musician who represents all of these tendencies ‘par excellence’ is saxophonist Emile Parisien. Born in Cahors in the wine-growing region of the Lot, he is a jazz visionary. He may have one foot in that ancient soil, but his gaze is firmly fixed on the future. The leading French newspaper Le Monde has called him “the best new thing that has happened in European jazz for a long time,” while the Hamburg radio station NDR made the point of telling its listeners to give Parisien their “undivided attention.”

The reference points on Parisien’s personal musical map are very widely spread indeed. They range from the popular folk traditions of his homeland to the compositional rigour of contemporary classical music, and also to the abstraction of free jazz. And yet everything he does has a naturalness and authenticity about it. Rather than appearing pre-meditated or constrained, his music has a flow, he traverses genres with a remarkable fleetness of foot and an effortless inevitability.

What is it that makes the simple urgency of Parisien’s music quite so enjoyable? How does he manage to combine a provocative and anarchic streak with such a captivating sense of swing? Anyone who has seen and heard him on stage will know: it is because he lives his jazz with body and soul, because there is an authenticity and honesty inflecting every breath and every note.

Ballaké Sissoko (b. 1968), the son of the famous Griots Djelimady Sissoko, is a brilliant kora player. He has worked with Toumani Diabaté and Taj Mahal, among others. His first album with Toumani Diabaté (kora) and the singers Alboulkadri Barry and Rokia Traoré as well as Fanga Diawara, solo violinist of the Mali National Instrumental Ensemble, was released in 2005, followed by another CD with chamber music in 2009, the result of his collaboration with the classical cellist Vincent Ségal (bumcello). The album “At Peace” was released in 2013.