Year: 2008
Record Label: Ruby Flower Records
Style: Straight-Ahead / Classic
Musicians: Claude-Marc Bourget - Steinway Concert-Grand Piano Model D (Hamburg)
Review: Emotional, uninhibited, and hauntingly beautiful, pianist Claude-Marc Bourget takes his Ruby Flower Records release, Second Time, into highly cultivated passages displaying attributes of fertility and spontaneous encounters, which cause the music to feel amorous and lyrical as well as accidental. Someone once said that there are no such thing as accidents, only plans that other people make without your knowledge of them, and Bourget makes good use of this practice throughout Second Time making every serendipitous twist in the passageways and every bump in the road seem arbitrary and sudden, when in fact, they have been tested and honed into perfectly winding grottos. His long stretches of wanderings wicked by the piano keys seem mysteriously guided, as even the moments of transgressions manage to stay on course like they are under a trance, which stops them from trailing away from their objective, and every track resounds with an objective in mind.
Bourget’s compositions are strictly focused as well as free to soar as high as the creative imagination will allow and sink as low as the heart’s emotional abyss. Through the episodes of deep contemplation and mesmerizing flights, Bourget exhibits impressive maturity that causes people to stop in their tracks and listen to him. You don’t have to be a fan of piano jazz in order to hear and understand the messages permeating through his music. The music speaks in one language which can be interpreted in many dialects, and allows Bourget to refurbish Beethoven’s piece “Song Of Destiny” beautifully. The haunting shadows and noir tint of “Tides Of Hopewell Rocks Part II” exhibit a calculated madness as the notes lunge, twist, spar, and parry as they implant lofty squabbles and lyrically clashing tides similarly to the images of Disney’s animation “Fantasia.” The capriciously wielding piano keys of “Ungrund” display anger in its avant-garde motifs, while the softly gilded spreads of “River In The Air” feel like soothing droplets raining down on the soul. Bourget’s interpretation of Brahms gently moving “Lull In Ashes” has breathtaking vistas, and his own “Dance Of The Large Bird” arouses liberating sensations emanating from its rivers of natural flutters.
Claude-Marc Bourget conveys deep emotions in his compositions allowing the notes to speak from his soul. Sometimes the chord movements seem like haphazard collisions, but on closer inspection, they are meaningful scrolls that coordinate with life‘s movements. Bourget has a mind that sees music unlike anyone else’s. His album Second Time shows his skills as a virtuoso on the piano, but also as a masterful composer and arranger. At 52 years of age, Bourget does not seem to want to turn back time, but to move ahead with it, as Second Time embraces huge challenges and tests Bourget’s reflexes to move spontaneously along the changing tides.
Tracks: Opening Part II, Northern Restlessness, Interlude, Plays Of Winds, Dance Of The Large Birds, Secret Ice Part II, Second Time, Lull In Ashes (Brahms), Song Of Destiny (Beethoven), Song Of Past, Tides Of Hopewell Rocks Part II, Dripping Of Whiteness, Ungrund, River In The Air, Awakening Cycle, Coda, Rising Death (Adagio)
Record Label Website: http://www.rubyflower-records.com
Artist's Website: http://www.claudemarcbourget.com
Listen or Buy: www.ejazzlines.com/CLAUDE-BOURGET-SECOND-TIME-p61168.html
Reviewed by:
Susan Frances
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