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Jacques Loussier Trio Play Bach ...and More [blu-ray]

Bach / Debussy / Loussier / Arpino / Segonzac Release Date: 02/25/2014
Label: Euroarts Catalog #: 2054064
Composer:  Johann Sebastian Bach ,  Claude Debussy ,  Erik Satie ,  Maurice Ravel Performer:  André Arpino ,  Benoît Dunoyer de Segonzac ,  Jacques Loussier Orchestra/Ensemble:  Jacques Loussier Trio Number of Discs: 1

This Blu-ray Disc is only playable on Blu-ray Disc players and not compatible with standard DVD or HD DVD players.

Also available on standard DVD

R E V I E W S

I used to say that in the 1960s the Modern Jazz Quartet was the favorite jazz group of people who didn’t like jazz. I forgot the Jacques Loussier Trio, which, featuring drummer Christian Garros and a wonderful bassist, Pierre Michelot, blanketed the decade with a half dozen best-selling recordings. Loussier is said to have sold six million LPs. He had a gimmick, if you want to call it that: he improvised elegantly on themes of Bach, so his records were called “Play Bach Read more Volumes One to Five.” Later there was “Play Bach in 4 Phase Stereo.” I don’t know where else they were sold, but I know his records were everywhere on Ivy League campuses.

Jazz critics, who then tended to be special kinds of ideologues and keepers of the flame, dismissed him. There was an inherent bias against anything popular, of course, but Loussier was also French, never (in my hearing) played a blues, and out-sold Bud Powell and Monk combined. I took a middle view. For one thing, Loussier came by his repertoire honestly. He played the Anna Magdalena book compulsively as a child, and began to improvise on the themes for its own sake. When he went to the Paris Conservatoire, he was encouraged by his classmates to play his version of Bach. I am not sure how he convinced French Decca to record his first album of Bachian improvisations, but the success of that record meant he could stop playing behind singers in what he says were nasty nightclubs. How else, one might ask, could a classically trained French pianist make it in the jazz world? More important, his playing was never without interest. He noticed, in a way that was less common then than now, that Bach wrote beautiful melodies, and lots of them. Bach wasn’t merely the Air on a G String and then a bunch of academic exercises. Loussier has a beautiful, light touch, and he found a graceful way of interacting with his trio. He produced lucid, gently swinging recordings that were charming in their own way.

As this disc suggests, he is still producing such music. The DVD captures a concert with the unsmiling pianist in a beautiful church in Leipzig. He plays a succession of themes by Bach, interrupted by Debussy’s Arabesque and L’isle joyeuse, Satie’s Gymnopedie No. 1 and—this was a surprise—Ravel’s Bolero. Aside from the church and an attentive audience, there is not much to see. Loussier has little charisma—he can barely bring himself to smile on the group photo on the back cover. He is accompanied by a carefully restrained drummer and an excellent bassist, Benoit Dunoyer de Segonzac. He makes the familiar melodies sing as usual. He never makes a mistake. He’s pleasant to listen to. I remember telling a friend who owned Loussier’s records in the mid 1960s, Yeah, but what about Monk? My friend found Monk ugly, and most of the jazz I played too aggressive. For listeners like that, and I don’t scorn them, Loussier was a find. He still is.

Michael Ullman, FANFARE
reviewing the DVD version Read less