Kate Lindsey / Baptiste Trotignon THOUSANDS OF MILES

 

THOUSANDS OF MILES

 

Duo Jatekok LES BOYS

The piano duo formed by Arthur Gold (1917–90) and Robert Fizdale (1920–95) enjoyed immense fame in the post-war years. Poulenc wrote a piece for them, as did Darius Milhaud, Samuel Barber, Luciano Berio and John Cage. They recorded with Leonard Bernstein. Nicknamed "The Boys", they played all over the world and were praised for their ‘seamless perfection and an inimitable "joie de vivre" (New York Times). The Boys were also famed for their bestselling books and television programmes on cooking, their other passion! Duo Jatekok was formed in 2007. Like The Boys and unlike most current piano duos, Adélaïde Panaget and Naïri Badal are not siblings, but childhood friends. "They have everything going for them: dynamic rigour and expressive energy, exuberant keyboard skills and multilingual touch, and more than anything else, a sort of jubilatory osmosis", wrote Le Monde. For this first recording on Alpha, they have decided to pay tribute to "The Boys" with a programme of works written for them, Poulenc’s Sonata for two pianos and Élégie and a composition by a legend of jazz, the American pianist Dave Brubeck, Points of Jazz. Duo Jatekok also wanted to include music by one of their contemporaries: Baptiste Trotignon’s Trois Pièces (including one dedicated to Poulenc!) complete the programme.

Kate Lindsey / Baptiste Trotignon THOUSANDS OF MILES

Closing the distance between classical music and Broadway, between the old and new worlds, between opera and jazz... Thousands of Miles is born out of an encounter between two extraordinary performers: opera star Kate Lindsey and jazz pianist Baptiste Trotignon.

For their debut joint album, Kate Lindsey and Baptiste Trotignon have produced a rich and varied programme around the songs of Kurt Weill, from Nanna’s Lied and Trouble Man, to classics from The Threepenny Opera and Lost in the Stars. The journey through three European languages brings the listener to the very beginnings of jazz, and features new arrangements and deft improvisations by the award-winning Trotignon. They also pay homage to three composers who, like Weill, were forced to leave their homelands in Germany and Austria, emigrating to the ‘new world’ of the United States of America and taking their stories and styles with them: Alma Mahler, Zemlinsky and Korngold. The disparate group are united by a shared narrative, their songs all speaking of intense longing and homesickness. Several songs have rarely been recorded before.

London-based, American mezzo soprano Kate Lindsey has thrilled audiences around the globe with her performances of Mozart and Purcell, but grew up steeped in the music of Broadway, from Gershwin to Cole Porter. She comments “the works on Thousands of Miles all share a deep, complex search for a sense of belonging, for a collective spirit, for a physical and emotional home. In exploring this idea, Baptiste and I brought together our two very different musical worlds. It was a journey where we both had to open ourselves up and make ourselves vulnerable, myself as a classically-trained singer, and Baptiste, who has rhythm in his DNA. Together, I hope we developed a deep mutual understanding of each other's musical language and used it to enrich our own.”