The core trio of Cécile Cappozzo (piano), Patrice Grente (double bass) and Etienne Ziemniak (drums) release their second Ayler album, expanded to a quintet with Jean-Luc Cappozzo on trumpet and Guillaume Bellanger on saxophone, performing six works connected like a suite that flow beautifully through Cappozzo's warm compositions, including a piece dedicated to Carla Bley.
"Four years after their all-improvised first album ("Sub rosa", 2018, ayCD-153), the trio of Cécile Cappozzo (piano), Patrice Grente (double bass) and Etienne Ziemniak (drums) returns to us with "Hymne d'automne", this time as a quintet, with the addition of two 'blowers': Jean-Luc Cappozzo on trumpet and Guillaume Bellanger on saxophone. Over the journey of the five improvising musicians in landscapes with autumnal colors, the music is in turn dreamlike, energetic, flamboyant (even fiery) and of great formal coherence in the sequence of improvisations with the three themes composed for the occasion."-Ayler Records
"For this record there are really only four compositions: 'Autumn Hymn', 'Dance Dance', 'Carla' and a rhythmic phrase without a fixed melody called "Orage'. I wrote the 'Carla' theme when I was 19, it's very short. At that time I listened to Carla Bley and Paul Bley a lot.
I wrote the other three songs about two years ago, during the time of Covid lockdown. My approach is as follows: first I sing the melody, write it, then I look for the bass to anchor it, then the harmony, and finally I imagine how to divide the voices between several instruments. I gave them to the musicians and the idea was to start with improvised pieces in which the themes can arise at any moment, from anyone's initiative, in any order. This record, Hymne d'automne, is better suited to listening in its entirety because it is designed as a whole, a single and same piece."-Cécile Cappozzo