Month: March 2026

Jean-Marie Machado & Danzas Orchestra: Sinfonia (RJAL 397050)

| Tyran Grillo

Jean-Marie Machado piano
Jean-Charles Richard chief conductor
Cécile Grassi viola
Cécile Grenier viola
Gwenola Morin viola
Guillaume Martigné cello
Clara Zaoui cello
Marc Buronfosse double bass
Élodie Pasquier clarinets
Stéphane Guillaume flutes, tenor saxophone
Renan Richard soprano and baritone saxophones
Tom Caudelle saxhorn
François Thuillier tuba
Didier Ithursarry accordion
Joachim Machado guitar
Marion Frétigny percussion, marimba, glockenspiel
Aubérie Dimpre percussion, vibraphone, glockenspiel
Recording, mixing, mastering at Studios la Buissonne, Pernes-les-Fontaines, France
Recorded November and December 2023 and mixed April and June 2024 by Gérard de Haro, assisted by Matteo Fontaine
Mastered by Nicolas Baillard at La Buissonne Mastering Studio
Steinway grand piano prepared and tuned by Sylvain Charles
Produced by Cantabile and Gérard de Haro & RJAL for La Buissonne
All tracks composed and arranged by Jean-Marie Machado
Release date: January 24, 2025

Jean-Marie Machado has long composed as if mapping a living geography, each work another inlet along a coastline he continues to discover. Sinfonia, written for his Danzas Orchestra, arrives like a new tide upon that shore. Across more than three decades and thirty albums, from solitary piano meditations to the breadth of large ensembles, Machado has cultivated a language where jazz breathes with classical lungs. The celebrated Cantos Brujos revealed the power of this synthesis. Sinfonia deepens that current.

“Ria Largo” opens with gentle inevitability. Stepwise motifs shimmer like sunlight across tidal water while the glockenspiel scatters small sparks of brightness through the orchestral surface. The music glances backward through salt air toward older voyages and half-remembered ages, a harbor scene where departure feels imminent but the ropes have not yet been cast free.

From this threshold emerge three diptychs that move like successive swells. “Tanghoule” enters beneath a dimmer sky, its atmosphere shaped by the shadowed viola of Cécile Grenier. Didier Ithursarry’s accordion spreads a soft harmonic glow while Marc Buronfosse’s bass walks with deliberate tenderness. Renan Richard’s soprano saxophone floats through with poised lyricism, suspended between inward reflection and outward motion.

“Barcaronde” turns the vessel toward open water. Guitarist Joachim Machado begins amid flowing piano figures whose ripples widen across the ensemble. The cello of Guillaume Martigné gradually assumes the foreground, unfolding a patient monologue that draws surrounding voices into a finely woven tapestry. What begins as solitary expression becomes shared narrative. In “L’écume des rires,” vitality breaks through as accordion, clarinet, and tuba form a lively trio. Their quicksilver dialogue opens a chamber of inspired improvisation. The second half reveals a different character altogether, one that is brittle in appearance yet strangely resilient, like shells shaped by relentless tides.

“Barque magnétique” introduces a deeper nocturne through the baritone saxophone of Richard, whose dark buoyancy drifts across the ensemble like a lantern gliding over black water. Magic lingers here in quiet form, a subtle phosphorescence. “Dérive des cinq pas” centers on violist Cécile Grassi, whose line wanders through the ensemble with contemplative patience. Fragments of melody appear like objects discovered in tidal pools after the sea withdraws. The mood remains intimate, inviting the listener to lean closer.

Energy brightens with “Volte Flamme.” Stéphane Guillaume’s flute darts through the ensemble with birdlike agility while percussionists Marion Frétigny and Aubérie Dimpre construct an intricate terrain of rhythm. The electric guitar flashes through the texture with bright sparks, its voice cutting momentarily through the orchestral weave. Afterward, “Tréhourhant” offers a pause of quiet reflection. The piano speaks alone in restrained, mournful phrases that seem to measure the distance traveled.

The closing “Jig Raz” gathers the ensemble into a surge of unity. A geometric groove forms beneath wordless vocals that rise from the orchestral body like wind filling a sail. The music spirals upward with exuberant force, lifting itself like a waterspout climbing toward the clouds and carrying the listener into open air.

Yet the lasting resonance of Sinfonia lies deeper than imagery. Machado understands that the sea offers a way of thinking about sound itself. Music resembles water in its refusal of permanence. A phrase appears, glimmers briefly, then dissolves into the larger motion surrounding it. Improvisation becomes an act of listening to the present moment rather than attempting to capture it.

Standing before the ocean, one senses how small gestures participate in immense processes that began long before us and will continue long after. Machado and his orchestra seem content with that truth. They do not attempt to master the tide. They simply enter its rhythm and allow the music to move as it must. Perhaps that is the quiet lesson of Sinfonia. Meaning does not always arrive as a destination. Sometimes it reveals itself only while we drift.

The Magic Lantern: To Everything a Season (RJAL 397049)

| Tyran Grillo

Jamie Doe vocals
Fred Thomas bass
Matt Robinson piano
Dave Hamblett drums
Tobin Fincker tenor saxophone, clarinet
Matthieu Michel flugelhorn
Kieran McLeod trombone
Recorded August 1-4, 2023 at La Buissonne Studios by Gérard de Haro, assisted by Matteo Fontaine
Mixed October 25-27, 2023 by Gérard de Haro, Fred Thomas, and Jamie Doe, assisted by Matteo Fontaine
Mastering at La Buissonne Mastering Studio by Nicolas Baillard and Jamie Doe
Steinway grand piano prepared and tuned by Sylvain Charles
Coproduced by Hectic Ecletic Records and La Buissonne Label
Release date: October 25, 2024

Some albums announce themselves with grand gestures. Others unfold more quietly, revealing their character with patience. The Magic Lantern’s To Everything a Season belongs firmly in the latter category. Led by Australian-born and UK-based songwriter Jamie Doe, the project has long occupied a space where folk songwriting intersects with the exploratory instincts of jazz and chamber music. On this latest release, those elements feel especially well balanced. The result is a record that moves gently but deliberately, trusting the strength of its poetry and the sensitivity of the musicians bringing it to life.

Recorded over four focused days at La Buissonne Studios in the south of France, the album captures the kind of immediacy that can only emerge when musicians share a room and respond to one another in real time. Engineer Gérard de Haro, recognizing the quiet intensity of the sessions, helped shape an environment where the performances could breathe without unnecessary interference. Rather than striving for polish, the recording preserves the subtle dynamics of collaboration. What emerges is not the sheen of perfection but the presence of discovery, the sound of ideas forming collectively in the moment.

The ensemble itself draws largely from London’s vibrant jazz community. Bassist Fred Thomas, who also co-arranges the material, anchors the music with lines that are patient and grounded. Matt Robinson’s piano moves between structure and openness, providing harmonic spaces for the others to inhabit. Dave Hamblett’s drumming rarely asserts itself forcefully, instead shaping rhythm with a light, responsive touch. Keiran McLeod’s trombone adds warmth and depth to the arrangements, its tone bending gently around the vocal lines. Two additional voices arrive from continental Europe: Robin Fincker’s searching tenor saxophone and Matthieu Michel’s flugelhorn, whose soft lyricism brings a reflective glow to several of the album’s most delicate moments. Together the septet demonstrates a remarkable commitment to restraint, treating silence and space as carefully as melody.

At the center of this balanced environment stands Doe’s voice. Unadorned and intimate, it carries a quiet clarity that allows emotional weight to step naturally onto the scale. The arrangements orbit it with patience, rarely crowding the lyrics and often allowing instrumental phrases to linger in the air before resolving. Nothing here feels hurried. Each track unfolds at its own pace, inviting the listener into a reflective atmosphere that rewards careful attention.

Lyrically, To Everything a Season represents an important step forward in Doe’s songwriting. The session moves through grief, tenderness, confusion, and small flashes of joy with equal lucidity, rarely resorting to grand declarations. Instead, Doe focuses on the textures of everyday experience, recognizing that the ordinary details of life often carry the deepest resonance. Music has always drawn strength from this transformation of the quotidian into something shared. A passing memory, a moment of doubt, a fleeting instance of grace. In Doe’s hands, these fragments become songs that quietly illuminate the inner life.

From the opening track, “Trembling,” the listener encounters an artist who is attentive to life’s expressive fulcrums. The song acknowledges how closely vulnerability and resilience can coexist, setting the tone for an excursion that treats feeling not as spectacle but as terrain to be navigated thoughtfully. “Two in One” reflects on coincidence and the unexpected alignments that shape our lives, suggesting that certain encounters carry a meaning that extends beyond their immediate circumstances. Rather than dramatizing these moments, Doe observes them with gentle curiosity, finding significance in experiences many might overlook.

Several songs engage directly with themes that resonate across generations. “Loops” confronts the painful realities of dementia, reflecting on the fragile relationship between memory and identity. “Data Points” turns its gaze toward the alienation of the digital age, where the complexity of human experience can feel flattened by metrics and algorithms. In contrast, “Sweetheart” meditates on love grounded firmly in the present moment, focusing on the humility and devotion that sustain lasting connection.

Elsewhere, Doe explores the interplay between uncertainty and conviction. “Hear Me” imagines songwriting as part of a long lineage, suggesting a form of inheritance passed through time. Creation becomes less an act of solitary invention than participation in an ongoing human conversation. Even the album’s lighter passages carry this reflective spirit. “Home” approaches belonging with warmth and subtle humor, while “Joy is a Choice” affirms that happiness often requires deliberate attention and upkeep.

The album concludes with the instrumental “Epilogue,” a brief but poignant farewell that allows the ensemble to speak without words. After the lyrical reflections that precede it, it feels like a quiet exhale. The musicians move together with understated sensitivity, offering a final reminder of how central their collective presence has been to the album’s passionate depth. Throughout To Everything a Season, these players function not as background accompaniment but as attentive collaborators. Each listens closely, shaping the air through small responses and subtle shifts in texture.

What ultimately distinguishes the record is its faith in the communicative power of everyday life. Doe does not attempt to summarize the human condition or offer definitive answers. Instead, he opens a series of small windows onto the involvements that quietly shape us. When gathered into song, they reveal unexpected connections. In listening closely to them, we may find that what seemed private or fleeting is in fact part of a much larger conversation.