Raphaël Pannier’s Debut CD Finally Arrives

courtesy of Braithwaite & Katz

Faune, the debut album of jazz drummer and composer Raphaël Pannier was originally scheduled for release at the end of this past August. However, the continuing pandemic has disrupted any number of release plans; and, according to Amazon.com, Faune will be available this coming Friday. Nevertheless, because the recording was produced by the Paris-based French Paradox label, Amazon will not be providing physical copies that would have to be shipped over from France. However, Amazon has created a Web page for processing pre-orders for downloading the new album; and that Web page includes a “Listen Now” button for previewing two of the tracks.

[added 9/14, 3:30 p.m.:

Apparently, French Paradox also distributes through Bandcamp. As a result, the site has a Web page that supports not only streaming and download but also delivery of the physical CD. That Web page even includes, for a little less than four more euros, an “autographed” physical package. Note the currency, however. All Bandcamp prices are given in euros, and those prices are subject to change. In addition, the delivery will be from France; and shipping times are likely to be more variable than they were prior to the pandemic.]

The tracks are organized in such a way that original compositions reflect (and, in one case, preview) music by other composers. Indeed, the album title evokes a similar action of reflection. Claude Debussy’s “Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune” (prelude to the afternoon of a faun) amounts to a reflection on the text of the poem “L’après-midi d'un faune” by Stéphane Mallarmé. Debussy saw his “prelude” as music that would be appropriate to precede a reading of Mallarmé’s poem.

Debussy is not one of the composers represented on Pannier’s album. However, Maurice Ravel is, with an arrangement of the “Forlane” movement from his suite Le Tombeau de Couperin. Less expected is the presence of another French composer, Olivier Messiaen, with one of the movements from his twenty-movement suite Vingt Regards sur l’enfant-Jésus (twenty visions of the infant Jesus). Pannier prepared an arrangement of the fifteenth of those “visions,” “Le baiser de l’enfant-Jésus,” (the kiss of the infant Jesus). This is preceded by Pannier’s own “Lullaby,” clearly identifiable as a “prelude” to the Messiaen movement with an arpeggiated passage that reflects on some of Messiaen’s earliest experiments in harmonic progression.

More familiar idioms can be found in Pannier’s arrangement of “Capricho de Raphael,” composed by the Brazilian bandolimist Hamilton de Holanda. (The bandolim is the Portuguese contribution to the mandolin family. Curiously, the advance material for this album never mentions whether or not Pannier is the “Raphael” in the composer’s title!)

Finally, there are two jazz compositions, both of which may be described as “adventurously modern,” that provided points of departure for Pannier. The album begins with Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman,” which is immediately followed by Pannier’s “Midtown Blues.” The other selection is Wayne Shorter’s “E.S.P.” (Extra Sensory Perception), which was the opening track for the first Columbia album presenting the “second Miles Davis quintet,” E.S.P. Pannier prepared brief “Intro” and “Outro” compositions, both of which are enhanced with electronic effects provided by Jacob Bergson.

Shorter was definitely a good choice, since Pannier’s “front line” consists only of alto saxophonist Miguel Zenón; and, in Pannier’s quartet, Zenón does not have to worry about competing with a virtuoso trumpeter! The rest of the quartet consists of François Moutin on bass and Aaron Goldberg on piano. However, Giorgi Mikadze takes the piano for the Messiaen and Ravel selections. Indeed, he plays the “Forlane” pretty much as Ravel wrote it, allowing the other three musicians to work around him (with a few subtle interjections from Bergson’s electronics). Mikadze then returns to the piano for Pannier’s final composition, “Monkey Puzzle Tree.”

Taken as a whole, Faune provides an opportunity for attentive listening that will probably be reinforced by approaching the entire album as a suite unto itself.