Michel Benita – Looking At Sounds (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:03:02 minutes | 1,10 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM
Algeria-born bassist Michel Benita, long a mainstay of the French jazz scene, introduces his revised quartet. Swiss flugelhornist Matthieu Michel and French drummer Philippe Garcia are retained from Benita’s Ethics band, and the quartet is completed by Belgian keyboardist Jozef Dumoulin. Dumoulin’s swirling, floating sounds and colours – he sounds like no other Fender Rhodes player – have inspired Benita to write evocative new music for the group. The repertoire also includes a bewitching cover version of Antônio Carlos Jobim’s “Inutil Paisagem”, the freely improvised “Cloud To Cloud”, and a touching solo bass interpretation of Jule Styne’s “Never Never Land”. Looking At Sounds was recorded at Studios La Buissonne in the South of France in March 2019.
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Andy Sheppard, Michel Benita, Sebastian Rochford – Trio Libero (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 51:47 minutes | 535 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © ECM
UK saxophonist Andy Sheppard’s second ECM album introduces his freely lyrical new trio with Michel Benita and Sebastian Rochford. All three players share a sense of stylistic open-mindedness. Drummer Rochford is one of the young players changing perceptions of British jazz with bands Polar Bear and Acoustic Ladyland. Algiers-born French bassist Benita, who cites Charlie Haden and Scott LaFaro as influences, has played with Archie Shepp, Dewey Redman, Lee Konitz and in the ELB trio with Nguyên Lê and Peter Erskine. Repertoire here includes originals by Sheppard, Benita and Rochford, plus group improvisations and the standard “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows.” In all contexts, interaction is highly creative, as Benita and Rochford respond perceptively to Sheppard’s melodically and rhythmically inventive lines. Recorded July 2011 at Auditorio Radiotelevisione svizzera, Lugano.
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Michel Benita, “Ethics” – River Silver (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/96 kHz | Time – 49:27 minutes | 891 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Master, Official Digital Download – Source: HDTracks | Artwork: Digital booklet | © ECM
After two exemplary ECM discs in the company of Andy Sheppard, Michel Benita has an album with his own group. The Ethics band is international, and the Algiers-born bassist leads a line-up comprised of a flugelhornist from Fribourg, Switzerland, a koto player from Tokyo, a guitarist from Drøbak, Norway, and a French drummer who once lived in Turkey as a member of the Istanbul Symphony. The group’s music, correspondingly, flows – like the glistening river of the title – beyond borders.
Alongside his own compositions and a piece by Mieko Miyazaki, Benita includes a tune from Northumbrian UK piper Kathryn Tickell and one from Norwegian composer and organist Eyvind Alnæs (1872-1932). A strongly lyrical tendency prevails, Mathieu Michel’s graceful flugelhorn foregrounded, with koto, bass and drums interacting creatively at the band’s core. Colours of folk and colours of jazz are blended in Michel Benita’s writing, multi-idiomatic in a very natural way . Eivind Aarset’s guitars and what Benita calls “organic electronics” gently envelop the music. The whole sound-picture is finely-realized in the responsive acoustics of the Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI, Lugano, where River Silver was recorded in April 2015, with Manfred Eicher producing.
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