PROGRAMME: Spirituals
Following their CD release with ALPHA Classics, Reginald Mobley and Baptiste Trotignon present a selection of works taken from the album in a beautiful French Cistercian monastery
artists
Baptiste Trotignon – piano
Reginald Mobley – countertenor
When Bach, Mozart and Beethoven constituted the musical canon of Western Europe, the songs of slaves from Africa echoed in the colonies on the other side of the Atlantic, expressing with force the pain and the nostalgia, but also joy and the desire for freedom. At the origin of many musical forms associated with the United States of America, such as ragtime, jazz, gospel, blues, rock, techno and other forms of electronic music, the 'Spirituals' are a real anthem to resilience whose beauty and strength of lyrics and music symbolize hope and faith in humanity.
It was time to do justice to this musical heritage and honor its former performers. This is the mission of American countertenor Reginald Mobley, associated with French jazz pianist Baptiste Trotignon, whose exemplary backgrounds in their respective fields have created a unique collaboration to interpret these gems of black music, to be released on the label ' Alpha Classics' in spring 2023.
The program offered here is a collection of songs arranged or written for voice and piano by composers such as HT Burleigh, Florence Price and J Rosamond Johnson, or simply articulated and improvised by the performers from the original songs and texts.
“We wanted to offer in Because a different reinterpretation of this powerful repertoire, to offer them a different sound than the one that is most familiar to them.
On the one hand, the high register of the countertenor voice contrasts with the traditional low voices in this idiom of spirituals, but it is ultimately just as much linked to a tradition of black American voices, from James Brown to Michael Jackson and so many others. 'others.
And on the other hand the arrangements and interpretations voluntarily move away from the “classical” approach of these songs, without being in a really “jazz” color. We simply wanted to explore this razor's edge, like two tightrope walkers, between loving respect for a heritage and the freedom of improvisation, as a possible re-invention of the present moment."
Baptiste Trotignon