The London Jazz Festival programme is known to regularly extend well beyond the realm of jazz, a genre itself subject to wide open interpretation. For its 2010 edition, the festival organisers have invited Mexican electronic artist Murcof to perform at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, on the South Bank, two years on from his LJF debut in the Purcell Room next door, where he performed with Spanish ensemble BCN216.

For this evening’s performance, Murcof rekindled his long-running partnership with Francesco Tristano, began a few years ago when Fernando Corona produced Tristano’s debut solo record, Not For Piano, released in 2007, and which consequently developed into a full live collaboration. Continue Reading »

FRANCESCO TRISTANO
Idiosynkrasia
IF1012
InFiné 2010
09 Tracks. 66mins49secs

Amazon UK: CD US: CD Boomkat: DLD iTunes: DLD

A very talented young musician (he was born in 1981), Francesco Tristano Schlimé, to give his full name, moved to New York in 2000 to study at the prestigious Juilliard School, then went on to perform with the Russian National Orchestra. Tristano specialises in Baroque music and founded The New Bach Players ensemble in 2001, with whom he has recorded a number of classical works since. But, while in New York, Tristano also found a love for much more contemporary forms of music, even leading him to regularly deejay at various clubs in the city. Once back in Europe, he brought his love of classical music and techno together by developing a very personal style, which resulted in his non-classical debut album, Not For Piano, released in 2007 on the then fledging InFiné imprint, on which he revisited a number of electronic classics, including Rhythim Is Rhythim’s Strings Of Life, Jeff Mills’s The Bells or Autechre’s Overand, on the piano. With his follow up, Auricle Bio On, produced by Moritz Von Oswald, released a year later, Tristano created a very different piece of work, centered around two progressive and complex pieces set somewhere between musique concrète, minimal composition, abstract jazz and minimal techno. Beside his solo work, Tristano is also a member of Aufgang, a project formed with fellow Juilliard student and pianist Rami Khalifé and drummer Aymeric Westrich. The trio released their self-titled debut album last year.

Recorded in Carl Craig’s Planet E studios in Detroit, Idiosynkrasia is a more straightforward and accessible affair than its predecessor. Continue Reading »

FRANCESCO TRISTANO
Auricle Bio On
IF1004
InFiné 2008
02 Tracks. 49mins31secs

Buy: LP | MP3 | iTunes

At the confine of modern classical, electro-acoustic, musique concrète and Detroit techno, Francesco Tristano occupies a somewhat unconventional and radical place to say the least. A mere twenty-five years of age, the Luxembourg-born has already established himself as one of the most exciting classical pianists of his generation, having won the 2004 Concours International De Piano XXe Siècle in Orleans, France. He has since recorded a number of classical works by Bach, Berio, Ravel and Prokofiev. His first foray into electronic music came with Not For Piano, an album recorded with Fernando Corona, of Murcof fame, and released on InFiné, on which he offered piano pieces based on tracks by Derrick May or Autechre, and compositions stretching into jazz and techno territories.

Tristano’s love affair with techno and electronic music forms started when he moved to New York to study at the Julliard School aged seventeen, yet it took until last year for Not For Piano to materialise. Auricle Bio On is as unusual a project as is its creator. Continue Reading »