Released on 10 November 2023
« Hope » is the French instrumental trio’s first album, the ER Jazz Trio. It offers the listener a musical journey where styles and genres rub shoulders without jostling, merge and thus find the material of what makes the essence of jazz, music forever contemporary and always in question.
On retrouve dans les compositions du pianiste Eric Richard, un respect évident pour l’âge d’or du jazz moderne, telles des évocations de Thelonious Monk (« Monk’20 Special »), Bud Powell (« Dancing with Bud ») ou encore John Coltrane (« Thunder Trane »). De même, on devine un langage plutôt parkerien dans « Whims of the Sun (and Craze of the Moon) », alors que le thème de « Hope » évoque plutôt l’orchestre du Duke.
But classical music is also not left out in the cortege of influences of the pianist’s compositions: under his capricious blues attire, «A FAb Blues» is in fact a distant reminder of the «Warsaw Concerto» of the English composer Richard Addinsell. Similarly, «Waltz for Borodine» was inspired by the Russian composer’s 2nd string quartet. And the author maliciously tells us that the harmonic progression of "The Circadian Triangle" is inherited from a "Vision Fugitive" by Prokofiev, when the theme of the title "Hope" is – at its beginning – from the study of the "Concerto for Trumpet" of the Armenian composer Alexandre Aroutiounian!
To enrich the sound of the album, the trio calls on saxophonist Gaël Horellou and flutist Jérémie Mignotte, an ambitious and dynamic choice of timbres to better magnify the melodies and enhance the richness and diversity of the eleven titles that compose it.
Recorded in April 2023 by Gérard Lhomme at studio Gimini 22 in Lanmodez (Côtes d'Armor)
Mixed by Gérard Lhomme
Mastered by Dave Darlington at Bass Hit Studio in New York (USA)
Produced by Resolut Diffusion
Distributed by Inouïe Distribution