Ever After Stéphane Belmondo

• 1 Someday We’ll All Be Free 06:54
• 2 Ever After 05:58
• 3 Brother Hub 06:07
• 4 Flying Easy (Instrumental) 05:01
• 5 Little Girl Blue 06:56
• 6 Turn Around Go Deep 04:19
• 7 For All We Know 06:49
• 8 You Were Meant For Me 04:32
• 9 Thought Of Spirit 06:02
• 10 Ever After (Instrumental) 01:31
• 11 Flying Easy 05:01
• 12 The Closer I Get To You 04:25
• Total Runtime 01:03:35

Info for Ever After

'Ever After' is neither a record of covers in the manner of 'Wonderland' (his re-reading of Stevie Wonder with a jazz seal), nor a record centred on vocals like the trumpeter's previous collaboration with Brazilian singer Milton Nascimento. In choosing Donny Hathaway as the tutelary figure for his new opus, Belmondo wanted to do more than pay tribute to one of his favourite singers; here he positions himself as a 'total' musician, i.e. a man able to compose, write, arrange and perform songs in a broad swirl of influences, reject any differentiation between genres, see correspondences in the music of Ravel and Coltrane, and then go to saxophonist Yusef Lateef for advice on achieving his own musical vision (as for the latter, chance had nothing to do with it; Stephane and his brother Lionel had done the same three decades earlier).

Forty years after the release of the legendary 'Extension of a Man', an authentic world-album where Roberta Flack's partner attempted a fusion of music close to his heart (Stephane Belmondo has drawn the song Flying Easy from it), 'Ever After' is also a record with multiple inputs: voices mix with instruments, acoustics do business with electrics, and strings wrap brass while jazz vibrates to the shiver of Soul. The presence of Gregory Porter and Sandra Nkaké, the two vocal revelations of the year 2012, is all the better explained by the fact that they themselves, in their own careers, have the same un-blinkered view of music. Together, Porter and Nkaké sing Someday We'll All Be Free, originally written to give Donny Hathaway hope of ridding himself of his mental suffering, but now a song that resounds like a hymn to the freedom of the black community.

Invited to prefer a Fender Rhodes to his usual piano, Jacky Terrasson electrifies an album which ties up again with the best productions of the Seventies, and ogles the vintage sound which came from the legendary records released on Atlantic or CTI in that great era. Alongside Belmondo you can hear the American pianist Kirk Lightsey, who appeared on Motown's first sessions before establishing himself as a partner of choice for Dexter Gordon or Woody Shaw; the French bassist Thomas Bramerie, a friend of Belmondo since childhood and a longstanding companion in sets played from New York to Paris; and American drummer Johnathan Blake, whom audiences discovered in Kenny Barron's trio and who has for years been accompanying Tom Harrell (a trumpeter much-admired by Stephane).

Finally, there's one track with a special dimension in this context: just a standard, but no doubt the title where the strings are featured best in the arrangements of Christophe Larrieu (another companion from adolescence who today works with the 'Orchestre National du Capitole' in Toulouse). Little Girl Blue, whose very title speaks volumes of tenderness, is closely linked with the memory of Chet Baker: 'This is one of the first ballads I played with Chet. He'd invited me to play – I seem to remember it was at the New Morning – and, just after he introduced me, he went offstage leaving me on my own. He only came back on to play the melody. I knew his entire repertoire by heart then. The second piece we did together after that was Little Girl Blue; he sang the song while I accompanied him on trumpet.' Stéphane was just out of adolescence, chasing every chance to rub shoulders with the giants. Today, more than twenty years on, he's the one in front of the line-up, carrying the songs and the idea of song, words and moves, an authentic jazzman to the end of every note and breath — ever after. (Vincent Bessières)

Stéphane Belmondo, trumpet, flute
Kirk Lightsey, piano
Thomas Bramerie, double bass
Johnathan Blake, drums

Guests:
Jacky Terrasson, Fender Rhodes, piano
Sandra Nkaké, vocals
Gregory Porter, vocals

No biography found.

Booklet for Ever After