June 30, 2014

  • Stephane Kerecki's New Wave Jazz Combo

    The French New Wave Cinema of the 1950s and 1960s, led by directors Truffaut, Goddard, Demy, and Malle, redefined concepts of film by exploring unique aesthetics that often deconstructed expectations of what made an important scene, or by inserting seemingly irrelevant sequences.  Always a unique exploration of people’s personal worlds, the improvisational movie-making approaches created a significant place in the history of cinema for these films.  One important characteristic was a tendency to use jazz-like underscoring.  Performers such as the great Miles Davis provided one notable score for Louis Malle’s Ascension Pour L’Echafaud in 1958 that remains an interesting part of the performer’s recorded legacy.  Composers like Georges Delerue, Antoine Duhamel, and Michel Legrand all contributed to some of the most significant of these projects.

    Enter the Stephane Kerecki Quartet.  In Nouvelle Vague, the group pulls together some of the music of the New Wave into an interesting concept album.  The quartet serves as a sort of jazz club ensemble with soprano saxophonist Emile Parisien lending intriguing colors to familiar melodies and with excellent piano support from John Taylor.  Seductive singing by Jeanne Added provides a special flair for Revzani’s song from Pierrot Le Fou (1965) and Legrand’s “La Chanson de Maxence” from Demy’s Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (1967).

    The selections work well to illustrate the jazz connections and explorations of thematic development in these scores.  The Delerue selections may be the more surprising at first for those less familiar with the composer’s earlier work.  The “Suite” from Les Mepris (1963) is certainly one of the highlights of this release.  Hearing Bernard Herrmann’s music for La Mariee etait en noir (1967) in the midst of these other pieces is certainly fascinating. One can still hear the composer’s longing melodic ideas and personal stamp very easily here even in the midst of the improvisational breaks.  The result is an interesting release that remains faithful to the spirit of the original melodies and approaches in these works.  The recorded sound is equally stunning.

    While perhaps not for the film music purist, Nouvelle Vagues is certainly an interesting diversion and reminder of the style of a significant moment in film history.  It is available from Out Note Records and features about an hour of music overall.