CD: Abrazo

Abrazo. Embrace. Sometimes tight dancing, sometimes hand-to-hand combat. Is there a better image for the duo of accordionist Vincent Peirani and soprano saxophonist Emile Parisien? "It's like a marriage," Peirani says. "In the beginning, everything is great, wonderful, a paradise. But then there are always crises, that's normal. And right now we just have a rip-roaring desire to play together." There are probably few musicians who know each other as well as Peirani and Parisien. The two have played more than 1000 concerts together in the last ten years, more than 600 of them as a duo. They got to know each other in 2012 in drummer Daniel Humair's quartet. On a tour of Korea, they then played, quite spontaneously, a first night club concert as a duo. According to Peirani, a "ca-ta-strophe! to-tal disastre!". But shortly thereafter, without jet lag and well prepared, it clicked at a French festival and probably one of the most extraordinary formations of European jazz was born.