Benoit Delbecq & Fred Hersch Double Trio's "Fun House" and Chris Clark's Debut "Cedar Wisely"

SOURCE: GOMEDIA PR, Published: 2013-02-03

Songlines will release a pair of extremely diverse yet equally exciting albums on March 12. Fun House, the first recorded collaboration between the critically acclaimed pianists Benoit Delbecqand Fred Hersch, finds them performing in a rare double-trio configuration. It's a ground-breaking encounter and between jazz piano and the sonic resources of contemporary classical music, between American tradition and the European avant-garde.

Hersch's quest for absolute beauty and impeccable virtuosity have become legendary. Delbecq is one of Europe's most prominent jazz keyboardists; his compositions and elegant, complex improvisations build on John Cage's prepared piano techniques. Add to this Steve Argüelles' stealth “assistance and obstacles" live sampling, and three of the most celebrated rhythm section players of today (Jean-Jacques Avenel and Mark Helias on bass, and Steve Argüelles and Gerry Hemingway on drums), and the result is a multi-faceted collaboration, with opportunities for various combinations of duos and trios as well as full-group interaction. The music has its moments of abstraction, its moonlit soundscapes such as “One is Several," but it also embraces a jazzier aesthetic, for example on the Monkisyh/Lacyish “Night for Day."

The project was sparked in 2008 when Hersch came to a New York gig that Delbecq was playing with the John Hébert Trio. They had only met once before, but had been digging each other's playing on record. “The first time I listened to Pursuit I was completely mesmerized," says Hersch. “It is an amazing project and showed me that Benoit is a completely unique pianist, composer and conceptualist. I suggested we do something with two pianos, not realizing that he already had a duo project with Andy Milne (Where is Panonica?). So we thought, 'What would be novel and bit outrageous?"

Delbecq came up with the idea of double trio including his longtime collaborators Avenel and Argüelles, and Hersch had a long history with Helias and Hemingway. Delbecq notes, “the personnel came very naturally. Everybody knew each other already. I had worked with Mark for the Phonetics project and had met and played with Gerry several times. The first minutes of the first rehearsal I remember very precisely, they just showed we'd made a great choice! The music found its flow and its freedom from the very beginning."
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