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FFL 068CD
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"In May 1972, the wave of anger and the thirst for freedom that had swept the world in 1968 arrived in Madagascar. The Malagasy youth took the opportunity to exile in search of a brighter future. Several of them, all jazz musicians and often polyintrumentalists, came to Paris with their Afro hair and bellbottoms. Their names were Sylvin Marc, his cousin Ange 'Zizi' Japhet, Del Rabenja, Gérard Rakotoarivony and Frank Raholison. By chance, they crossed paths with pianist and bandleader Jef Gilson, who they had already met as kids during a series of concert and workshops in Tananarive four years earlier. Gilson was far from an unknown on the French jazz scene. He had played with Boris Vian and André Hodeir at the end of the forties, he was one of the first French composers to move away from the New-Orleans style to try his hand at bebop, had launched numerous young stars (Ponty, Texier, Portal...), was a polemical critic for Jazz Hot, had opened for Coltrane at Antibes/Juan Les Pins, and was part of the Double Six... But it was tough to make a living playing personal compositions and Jef, who didn't have enough money to return to the island and continue mining the seam of Malagasy jazz, saw an opportunity to relaunch Malagasy. He had his recording studio in the Les Halles area, at the Foyer Montorgueil, where he was teaching jazz to a choir. He set to work with the new Malagasy group, working on a repertoire and reviving some of his compositions from the '50s/'60s and also included more recent tunes. The group Malagasy 73 gigged a lot. One of their concerts was recorded on the 14 March in a club, 'Le Newport', in rue Grégoire de Tours, Saint Germain des Prés, not far from the 'Kiosque d'Orphée' where Gilson worked at the beginning of the '60s when he brought bebop and avant-garde jazz to the attention of a generation of musicians with his records imported from USA. This meeting between two generations and two cultures created a new mix between jazz, traditional music and electric funk. Jef Gilson had reinvented himself yet again, and it wouldn't be the last time." --Jérôme "Kalcha" Simonneau First ever standalone reissue, remastered. Licensed from Palm/Geneviève Quievreux.
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FFL 068LP
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2022 restock; LP version. 180 gram vinyl. "In May 1972, the wave of anger and the thirst for freedom that had swept the world in 1968 arrived in Madagascar. The Malagasy youth took the opportunity to exile in search of a brighter future. Several of them, all jazz musicians and often polyintrumentalists, came to Paris with their Afro hair and bellbottoms. Their names were Sylvin Marc, his cousin Ange 'Zizi' Japhet, Del Rabenja, Gérard Rakotoarivony and Frank Raholison. By chance, they crossed paths with pianist and bandleader Jef Gilson, who they had already met as kids during a series of concert and workshops in Tananarive four years earlier. Gilson was far from an unknown on the French jazz scene. He had played with Boris Vian and André Hodeir at the end of the forties, he was one of the first French composers to move away from the New-Orleans style to try his hand at bebop, had launched numerous young stars (Ponty, Texier, Portal...), was a polemical critic for Jazz Hot, had opened for Coltrane at Antibes/Juan Les Pins, and was part of the Double Six... But it was tough to make a living playing personal compositions and Jef, who didn't have enough money to return to the island and continue mining the seam of Malagasy jazz, saw an opportunity to relaunch Malagasy. He had his recording studio in the Les Halles area, at the Foyer Montorgueil, where he was teaching jazz to a choir. He set to work with the new Malagasy group, working on a repertoire and reviving some of his compositions from the '50s/'60s and also included more recent tunes. The group Malagasy 73 gigged a lot. One of their concerts was recorded on the 14 March in a club, 'Le Newport', in rue Grégoire de Tours, Saint Germain des Prés, not far from the 'Kiosque d'Orphée' where Gilson worked at the beginning of the '60s when he brought bebop and avant-garde jazz to the attention of a generation of musicians with his records imported from USA. This meeting between two generations and two cultures created a new mix between jazz, traditional music and electric funk. Jef Gilson had reinvented himself yet again, and it wouldn't be the last time." --Jérôme "Kalcha" Simonneau First ever standalone reissue, remastered. Licensed from Palm/Geneviève Quievreux.
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FFL 064LP
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Repressed. Souffle Continu Records present the first vinyl reissue of Jef Gilson's Le Massacre Du Printemps, originally released in 1971. In 1971, the day after the death of Igor Stravinsky, Jef Gilson, and his Unit (Pierre Moret and Jean-Claude Pourtier) made this curious homage to classical music. It is jazz, contemporary, and electroacoustic music that the trio interrogate through a wild "noise" session evoking as much John Cage as Pierre Henry, John Coltrane as the Percussions de Strasbourg, the Art Ensemble of Chicago as the Tacet by Jean Guérin. Le Massacre du Printemps, (the Massacre of Spring) is a strange kind of homage to Igor Stravinsky, who had just died when, in 1971, Jef Gilson recorded this not-to-be-missed album of French experimental jazz. "Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end," the Russian composer was quoted as saying and here is Gilson offering us... six! A funny bird (of fire) was Jef Gilson. Clarinetist who came up playing in the basement clubs with Claude Luter and Boris Vian, he turned to piano and multiplied his experiences in jazz: bebop, choral, modal, free, fusion... As a free spirit, Gilson welcomed many "up and coming" French musicians in his bands (Jean-Luc Ponty, Bernard Lubat, Michel Portal, Henri Texier...) as well as being associated with Woody Shaw, Nathan Davis, or Byard Lancaster. Later he would go on to create, Europamerica, a transatlantic formation in which Butch Morris, Frank Lowe, and Joe McPhee would play... But for the time being it's a massacre! With Pierre Moret on organ and Jean-Claude Pourtier on drums, Gilson improvises with style and gusto. On the eponymous title track of the album, he also plays tuba and invites Claude Jeanmaire to get involved on prepared piano. Spring, for the four musicians here, is windswept: billowing, rumbling, frantic, it sounds like Stravinsky played by the "Percussions de Strasbourg" without a scoresheet! After which, behind his electric piano, Gilson with Moret and Pourtier offers us five more "unpremeditated spontaneous expressions", as he wrote on the back of the album sleeve. Five wily and electric expressions which are like the soundtrack to a film which could also have been played by the Art Ensemble or Jean Guérin. Licensed from Futura / Marge. Remastered from the master tapes; restored artwork with obi strip.
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OI 020LP
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Reduced price, last copies... Modern Silence present a reissue of Jef Gilson's Enfin!, originally released in 1963. French pianist Jef Gilson came up in the '60s and played in a straight-ahead hard bop style and also made forays into Afro-jazz and free jazz, including a noteworthy version of Pharoah Sanders's "The Creator Has a Master Plan". He featured the young violinist Jean Luc Ponty on some early recordings, and also appeared on Magma drummer Christian Vander's Vander Et Les Trois Jeffs (1973). The pianist led numerous ensembles ranging from trios to creative big bands during his career, including the Jef Gilson Nonet, Jef Gilson et Malagasy, and the Jef Gilson Orchestra. Enfin! is a French modal jazz classic featuring some of the best musicians at the time: Portal, Pontu, Tholot, Jean Claude Petit, Francois Jeanneau, Bernard Vitet, Henri Texier, Jean Louis Chautemps.
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10"
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JMAN 064LP
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A collection of little known chansons -- with a twist of jazz -- produced by French jazzman extraordinaire, Jef Gilson. Available only on 10" vinyl, this album is a companion disc to the Jef Gilson Archives album (JMAN 063) and all tracks are exclusive to this release. Classic Gilson '60s repertoire with rarely heard vocal performances, this is sublime, sexy and seductive chanson jazz with a distinctly French flavor, some previously-unreleased songs, sung by obscure (or unknown) chanteuses inspired by Brigitte Bardot, France Gall and Francoise Hardy. The French chanson is a song that's as inextricably linked to French culture as crêpes, croissants and cognac. Their poetic, romantic lyrics are set to music that's characterized by following the rhythms of the French language rather than those of English, and have been used as serenades since time immemorial. Even in recent years many French artists, from Édith Piaf to Serge Gainsbourg, have added their own particular gems to the roster. Includes comprehensive and detailed liner notes with information on each track in English and French.
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2LP
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JMAN 063LP
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Deluxe double vinyl LP pressing housed in a thick, glossy gatefold sleeve
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CD
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JMAN 063CD
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A collection of previously-unreleased recordings, rehearsals, demos and alternate takes from the personal archive of brilliant French pianist, composer and arranger extraordinaire Jef Gilson. Since his passing in 2012, Jazzman Records has surveyed the substantial personal archive of Gilson's acetates, test pressings and reel-to-reel tapes with the kind permission of his widow, Geneviève. The task has not been easy; it's taken numerous trips to France and the generous assistance of a small army of translators, advisors, musicologists, amateur enthusiasts and record collectors, as well as the surviving members of Gilson's musical entourage, for the label to gather together the information required to make this album. Here you'll find early experiments in oriental and ethnic jazz with Lloyd Miller, unissued alternate takes of Gilson's classic repertoire, long-lost live performances from 1960s European jazz festivals, and rehearsals and jam sessions that developed into a lifelong creative obsession, none of which has been officially released before. The music on this release was specially chosen from hundreds of hours of alternate takes, rehearsals, live recordings, unissued sessions and personal recordings made from the '50s to the '70s. Despite the limitations afforded by mastering some of these recordings from anonymous reels of twisted, buckled tape and scratched, dusty old acetate discs, we hope that the music contained herein affords a fascinating and otherwise impenetrable insight into the workings of one of the great unsung creative forces of European jazz. The CD comes with a 24-page color booklet with in-depth liner notes and previously-unpublished photographs. All tracks previously-unreleased, fully-licensed and digitally-restored from their original source.
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2LP
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JMAN 042LP
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Deluxe gatefold double LP version. Jazzman Records presents one of the most brilliant and productive jazzmen ever to have lived: French pianist, composer and arranger extraordinaire Jef Gilson. With his career spanning the best part of a century, Gilson has made music with a who's-who of European and American jazz greats, has written, performed on and recorded innumerable film scores, albums and 45s, ran the Palm jazz record label... yet despite all this, the French jazzman remains criminally under-appreciated by so many jazz fans. Look him up on the internet -- there isn't even a Wikipedia entry! Jazzman addresses this unfortunate situation by releasing 19 songs spanning decades of his recording career. High points include the awesome modal masterpiece "Modalité Pour Mimi"; "Chakan" and "Agnus Dei," which feature a cathedral choir, and lesser-known private recordings such as "Valerie's Waltz" and "Valse A Quatre Temps." Jazzman also includes field recordings made on his trip to Madagascar, including a percussive version of the Lloyd Miller favorite "Chant Inca" and an unforgettable version of Pharoah Sanders' cult classic "The Creator Has A Masterplan." All in all, this is one of the finest albums Jazzman Records has made to date. Jef Gilson is now 84 years-old and wheelchair-bound. This album is all about the little-known musical genius, and the label has done their very best to represent his life story with the best of his music. Includes never-before-seen pictures, photos and images as well as exhaustive and extensive original liner notes in both English AND French. 180 gram vinyl pressing with cool textured art sleeve.
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CD
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JMAN 042CD
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Jazzman Records presents one of the most brilliant and productive jazzmen ever to have lived: French pianist, composer and arranger extraordinaire Jef Gilson. With his career spanning the best part of a century, Gilson has made music with a who's-who of European and American jazz greats, has written, performed on and recorded innumerable film scores, albums and 45s, ran the Palm jazz record label... yet despite all this, the French jazzman remains criminally under-appreciated by so many jazz fans. Look him up on the internet -- there isn't even a Wikipedia entry! Jazzman addresses this unfortunate situation by releasing 19 songs spanning decades of his recording career. High points include the awesome modal masterpiece "Modalité Pour Mimi"; "Chakan" and "Agnus Dei," which feature a cathedral choir, and lesser-known private recordings such as "Valerie's Waltz" and "Valse A Quatre Temps." Jazzman also includes field recordings made on his trip to Madagascar, including a percussive version of the Lloyd Miller favorite "Chant Inca" and an unforgettable version of Pharoah Sanders' cult classic "The Creator Has A Masterplan." All in all, this is one of the finest albums Jazzman Records has made to date. Jef Gilson is now 84 years-old and wheelchair-bound. This album is all about the little-known musical genius, and the label has done their very best to represent his life story with the best of his music. Includes never-before-seen pictures, photos and images as well as exhaustive and extensive original liner notes in both English AND French.
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7"
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JM 083EP
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Jazzman Records presents one of the most brilliant and productive jazzmen ever to have lived: French pianist, composer and arranger Jef Gilson. With his career spanning the best part of a century, Gilson has made music with a who's who of jazz greats, has written, performed on and recorded innumerable film scores, albums and 45s, ran the Palm jazz record label, yet despite all this, the 84 year-old remains criminally under-appreciated. Here is a limited, numbered edition 4-track 7" EP featuring some of his finest creations.
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