Laurent Cugny
Released November 4, 2010
Grand Prix de l’Académie du Jazz 2010
YouTube: https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=7f6PXVdszFc&list=OLAK5uy_mGyQvQLDN3yWZJCrG46GquJyp3PNJXm34
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/1q8wfxIzAbEgCb03WXhaiB?si=HgLrxaMYQuatV36DeDO7AA
About:
While the storm of the century falls on Los Angeles, Celestina del Sol (Laika Fatien), pregnant for two years, meets Anibal de la Luna (David Linx) and his brother Nelson (Yann-Gael Poncet). This extraordinary night is evoked by the opera pianist Laurent Cugny, who has been carrying the project for a long time, with eleven musicians and three singers.
We enjoy two hours during this tale adapted from a piece by José Rivera, “Cloud Tectonics”, based on time disordered, complicated loves and war seen as absurd over a rich and very illustrative music: introduction, notes and rhythms roll to signify the storm, and a saxophone chorus accompanies the antics of Celestina and Anibal.
Among many other examples, behind David Linx voice, the drums evoke “His Highness Los Angeles” when “she taunts the fire, taunts the ocean, taunts the earth, taunts the winds,” and the orchestra hums when Celestina accepts the invitation of Anibal. A work built in a linear way, therefore, music and narrative in unison. The sequences follow each other over time … but which one? Forty years? Only a few hours? Because we’ll learn in the end… but shh…
It was necessary, to tackle what is a “jazz opera” without being, or rather an oratorio, a talent for composition, orchestration and arrangement unparalleled. Laurent Cugny is, since the end of the seventies, accustomed to direct large formations – L’ONJ, the big band “Lumière, the Enormous Band” –, but this precise form is for him a first. Its predecessors in the field had set the bar very high: the Porgy and Bess Gershwin, of course, or the Carmen Jones filmed by Preminger, but also Wynton Marsalis with Blood on the Field, Carla Bley with Escalator Over the Hill, Ivan Jullien / André Serre and their Carmen Jazz with Dee Dee Bridgewater… In short, Cloud Tectonics was a challenge.
And we will talk about a “successful bet” not only because of the difficulties that its author had to overcome over the years but simply on the artistic level. Created at the Greslin Theatre, Nantes, on 7th April 2015 and loosely adapted from Cloud Tectonics of the Puerto Rican dramatist José Rivera, the jazz opera La tectonique des nuages is compsed by Laurent Cugny, based on a libretto by François Rancillac, the texts being sung by Yann-Gaël Poncet. This is a longstanding project, since the work was first created in a concert version at the Vienne jazz festival in July 2006, then performed at the Paris Théâtre de la Ville and successfully recorded in 2010. For this opera version, Laurent Cugny, on piano, is backed up by about ten musicians. The three singers are David Linx, Laïka Fatien and YannGaël Poncet.
Track Listing:
Disc 1
1. Ouverture (Yann-Gaël Poncet, Laika Fatien & David Linx) 4:32
2. Los Angeles (Yann-Gaël Poncet, Laika Fatien & David Linx) 1:50
3. Echec et mat (Yann-Gaël Poncet, Laika Fatien & David Linx) 0:14
4. Il est bien long ce feu rouge (Yann-Gaël Poncet, Laika Fatien & David Linx) 1:23
5. Rodrigo Cruz (Yann-Gaël Poncet, Laika Fatien & David Linx) 4:20
6. Je ne veux pas que vous dormiez dehors (Yann-Gaël Poncet, Laika Fatien & David Linx) 3:43
7. Los Angeles, la nuit, vue d’avion (Yann-Gaël Poncet, Laika Fatien & David Linx) 2:28
8. Arrivée à la maison (Yann-Gaël Poncet, Laika Fatien & David Linx) 0:22
9. Jamais je n’oublierai (Yann-Gaël Poncet, Laika Fatien & David Linx) 4:13
10. Debbie (Yann-Gaël Poncet, Laika Fatien & David Linx) 3:51
11. Sorgue et silence (Yann-Gaël Poncet, Laika Fatien & David Linx) 4:31
12. Le temps (Yann-Gaël Poncet, Laika Fatien & David Linx) 2:26
13. Une femme de 54 ans (Yann-Gaël Poncet, Laika Fatien & David Linx) 0:54
14. De la friture (Yann-Gaël Poncet, Laika Fatien & David Linx) 1:22
15. La valse des tanks (Yann-Gaël Poncet, Laika Fatien & David Linx) 3:32
16. Messe basse (Yann-Gaël Poncet, Laika Fatien & David Linx) 2:18
17. Nelson drague Celestina (Yann-Gaël Poncet, Laika Fatien & David Linx) 2:45
18. De l’intérieur du ventre (Yann-Gaël Poncet, Laika Fatien & David Linx) 0:57
19. J’entends l’océan (Yann-Gaël Poncet, Laika Fatien & David Linx) 4:40
Disc 2
1. Quelle heure est-il? (Yann-Gaël Poncet, Laika Fatien & David Linx) 4:38
2. Me pregnuto (Yann-Gaël Poncet, Laika Fatien & David Linx) 3:04
3. J’ai connu Debbie (Yann-Gaël Poncet, Laika Fatien & David Linx) 3:47
4. Eva (Yann-Gaël Poncet, Laika Fatien & David Linx) 5:59
5. Les pieds de Celestina (Yann-Gaël Poncet, Laika Fatien & David Linx) 1:34
6. J’ai peur (Yann-Gaël Poncet, Laika Fatien & David Linx) 0:59
7. Etrangère à mon propre corps (Yann-Gaël Poncet, Laika Fatien & David Linx) 4:20
8. Retour de Nelson (Yann-Gaël Poncet, Laika Fatien & David Linx) 0:21
9. Je suis libre, Anibal (Yann-Gaël Poncet, Laika Fatien & David Linx) 6:17
10. Menteuse! (Yann-Gaël Poncet, Laika Fatien & David Linx) 0:48
11. Anibal souffre (Yann-Gaël Poncet, Laika Fatien & David Linx) 0:32
12. Celestina reste seule (Yann-Gaël Poncet, Laika Fatien & David Linx) 1:52
13. Celestina a disparu (Yann-Gaël Poncet, Laika Fatien & David Linx) 3:56
14. Los Angeles reconstruite (Yann-Gaël Poncet, Laika Fatien & David Linx) 2:24
15. C’est moi, Anibal! Je suis revenue! (Yann-Gaël Poncet, Laika Fatien & David Linx) 3:51
16. Il y a quarante ans (Yann-Gaël Poncet, Laika Fatien & David Linx) 2:00
17. J’ai fouillé Los Angeles (Yann-Gaël Poncet, Laika Fatien & David Linx) 4:55
18. Me pregnuto (Reprise Anibal) (Yann-Gaël Poncet, Laika Fatien & David Linx) 3:0
Personnel:
Laurent Cugny: piano, timabales
Lionel Suarez: accordion
Pierre-Olivier Govin: alto and baritone saxophone
Thomas Savy: clarinet, bass clarinet and tenor saxophone
Frédéric Monino: bass guitar
Jérôme Regard: double bass
Frédéric Chapperon: drums
Nicolas Folmer: flugelhorn, trumpet
Eric Karcher: french horn
Frédéric Favarel: guitar
Denis Leloup, Phil Abraham: trombones
David Linx: vocals (Aníbal De La Luna)
Laïka Fatien: vocals (Celestina Del Sol)
Yann Gaël Poncet: vocals (Nelson De La Luna)
Recorded 2009-2010, at studio 103, Maison de Radio France
Recorded by Jean-Louis Deloncle and Jean-Michel Cauquy, assisted by Djaisan Taouss
Mixed by Jean-Michel Cauquy
Illustration by François Schuiten
Photography by Alain Pype
Review:
The musicians […] take short but numerous solos, because the structure itself requires the the most rigorous installation, especially as the story takes us into meanders that must be cleverly corrected by a thoughtful music. If it is necessary to follow the libretto, in the tradition, the arias become songs modeled according to the characters and the situations. In this concertante version, the recitatives […] bring welcome connections, revealing to the public the threads of an otherwise complex narrative. Feeling perhaps less inventive when he lets too much breathe music, Laurent Cugny wrote a score imprinted with lyricism, in a historical and geographical context still very present: by reference to the origins of the three protagonists, latin music of the between two wars period – very much in phase with the chosen instrumentation – circulate throughout the composition. To crown this success, the box in which La Tectonique is presented is at the height of the music. One hundred pages of a bilingual and illustrated booklet, two CDs and a Blueray DVD in 7.1, all in a superb box set edited by Radio France under the Signature label.
Gilles Gaujarengues (Citizen Jazz)
