Bright And Sweet Virginie Teychené

• 1 Don't Get Scared 03:37
• 2 Angel Face 06:02
• 3 Rat Race 02:20
• 4 Bless My Soul 03:40
• 5 Dry Cleaner From Des Moines 03:42
• 6 Goodbye Pork Pie Hat 05:10
• 7 Don't Explain 05:21
• 8 Tight 04:28
• 9 Familiar Dream (The Seductress) 02:33
• 10 Shiny Stockings 04:24
• 11 Living Room 05:02
• 12 Pra que discutir com madame 02:42
• 13 Midnight Fair 04:43
• 14 Por toda a minha vida 03:51
• 15 I'm Gonna Go Fishing 03:04
• 16 I Don't Know Enough About You 04:07
• 17 La Chanson de Maxence 04:23
• Total Runtime 01:09:09

Info for Bright And Sweet

This album confirms it, Virginie Teychené is a musician with a voice. She strolls through her imaginary museum dedicated to jazz singer-songwriters and brings her own light to each of its rooms. A grazing light in Familiar Dream, a bright light in Tight, the light of dawn in I'm Gonna Go Fishing and that of dusk in Goodbye Pork Pie Hat.

The contributions of her co-musicians are intense due to their restraint; Gérard Maurin's weightless double-bass arrangements, Stéphane Bernard's chiaroscuro piano playing, Jean-Pierre Arnaud's dance-like drumming, and last but not least, Éric Le Lann's inspired trumpet playing, all make Bright and Sweet an exemplary jazz album, where all the miniatures that make it up are in fact merely beginnings.

This album is a rather unusual kind of ‘songbook’, focusing on jazz singers who are also songwriters. It includes seventeen tracks which function as if they were the A and B side of a single album: the first side is more classical (up to the track ‘Tight’) and the second more ‘sophisticated’ in style, either in terms of the subjects the songs address, or in terms of the musical arrangements.

Cautiously and precisely, these singer-songwriters each carved out texts their voices then brought to life. A number of their songs will always be associated with their names: ‘Rat Race’ leads back to Mimi Perrin just as surely as ‘Don’t Explain’ carries Billie Holiday’s hallmark.

When singers write their own texts, the stories their pens bring forth closely conform to their real lives, their worries, their dreams; they allow us to take a peek at, and listen in on, a secret part of themselves, in a snap-shot image of a given time in their lives.

Singing their ‘lyrics’ is like opening a magic box, bringing us closer to them not only through the subjects they address, the images and the figures of style they use, but also because the way they select one word over another reveals their relationship to rhythm and sound and creates a pre-existent form of music within their music. Their choices highlight their receptiveness to one sound or another and this sometimes forms a connection and resonates with that of the performer.

The performer interacts with the songwriter above all in terms of the material aspect of their lyrics, identifying with the sounds the words can make and the way they fit together. Each word buds and then flowers in their mouth, spreading through their whole body, until it is set free and allowed to flow into the listener’s ear.

The choice of tracks on this album was influenced as much by the meaning of the texts and the way they sounded as by the melodies which underpin them. I hope you will gain as much pleasure from listening to them as we did from recording them.

Virginie Teychené, vocals
Stéphane Bernard, piano
Gérard Maurin, double bass
Jean-Pierre Arnaud, drums

No biography found.

Booklet for Bright And Sweet