Morphée Marc Perrenoud Trio

• 1Morphée05:55
• 2Night Run04:24
• 3Stairs (Take 2)05:08
• 4The Reb04:14
• 5A Feather06:26
• 6East Tower05:13
• 7Twenty Five Ghosts02:52
• 8A Flower to My Daughter03:45
• 9Stairs (Take 1)04:35
• Total Runtime42:32

Info for Morphée

„For some people, it's natural to write music at night. Not for me. I'm more of a morning person. Except last summer: it was too hot during the day, so I became a night composer...“ A radiant personality on the European jazz scene, pianist Marc Perrenoud does nothing like everyone else. At a time when so many bands are slavishly adapting to fashions and trends, the 38-year-old musician from Switzerland prefers continuity to passing fads. Formed in 2007 with drummer Cyril Regamey and bassist Marco Müller, his trio has performed some 400 concerts worldwide. A longevity that pays off: in twelve years, the three musicians have developed a strong complicity that shows off in their small but essential discography.

After four albums („Logo“, „Two Lost Churches“, „Vestry Lamento“, „Nature Boy“) expressing its solar side through melodic warmth, shimmering sounds and fiery grooves, here comes „Morphée“, the Marc Perrenoud Trio's fifth album. And this time, the sound world is mysterious and elusive like the stuff of dreams. „Geneva was stifling in August 2019, recalls Marc. At night it was cooler, so I started working on themes between 2 and 5am. I slept a little, wrote, slept a little again... In summer, the relationship with time is different, things slow down. Writing at night, between sleep and half consciousness, allowed me to enter a different world, with a greater sense of space and resonance, to develop a free, open, timeless sound.“

To explore the possibilities of the new repertoire, Marc, Cyril and Marco spent a week in residence at Château Rouge in Annemasse (France). „Up until the fourth album, we'd worked essentially on instinct, says Marc Perrenoud. Our complicity is a huge advantage, it creates automatisms of thought, we understand each other without having to explain anything.“ But this complicity, which borders on osmosis, can also become a challenge, warns Marc: „The brain wants to be comforted in its habits. It takes a lot of effort to reframe it, to find new ideas... At Château Rouge, we were isolated and thus were able to work in a very different way, we had a lot of discussions!“ With no material constraints, only preoccupied with the music in the new album, the three friends were able to take the time to talk, to experiment, to try out new forms of interaction.

The result is eight original compositions by the pianist, eight snapshots of nightlife captured in the heatwave fever of summer 2019. With its „rather undefined“ form, the title-theme fares gracefully with the „elusive flutter of a dream“, according to Marc. The breathless dynamism of „Night Run“ suggests a „game of urban hide-and-seek on a night without lights“. In contrast, both takes of „Stairs“ reveal the astonishing potential of the simplest of materials: a scale descends and then ascends like a „staircase“, „a melody without any articulation“, which allows „the trio to breathe and open the soundscape in a very slow tempo“. With „The REB“, the urban atmosphere makes a come-back as an „imaginary subway running in the heart of the night“. „A Feather“ evokes a forest haunted by enigmatic shadows. In „East Tower“, Cyril Regamey's precise and glittering drumming launches a ramshackle shuffle groove, its quasi-monkian melody in the unusual key of C sharp minor. The caressing „Twenty Five Ghosts“ offers another surprising rhythmic construct: 25 beats divided in 7-5-7-6, which creates a „slightly shaky machine, with a wooden leg“, Marc jokes. Written for „Aksham“, the first album of the quintet co-led by Marc Perrenoud with singer Elina Duni and trumpet player David Enhco, „A Flower To My Daughter“ is here metamorphosed into an intimate ballad, introduced by Marco Müller’s crepuscular song on the double bass.

Recorded October 29/30, 2019, at the Studio de Meudon (South-West of Paris), on a magnificent Steinway grand piano, the album benefits from Julien Bassères luminous sound recording. Furthermore, the fascinating cover photos by Liliroze ideally embrace the music’s dreamlike atmosphere. On the front, the three musicians seem to welcome the daylight, happy to have survived their nighttime anguish. On the back, an old upright piano with elaborate candlesticks conjures up a ghostly mist between blue-green pastels and night birds.

In Greek mythology, Morpheus is the god of „prophetic dreams“, who „gives form“ to dreams. The Marc Perrenoud Trio has given them a voice.

Marc Perrenoud, piano
Marco Müller, double bass
Cyril Regamey, drums

Marc Perrenoud
is a swiss born in Berlin in 1981, he started playing piano and improvising at the age of 6. He studied at the Geneva Conservatory until 2001 and obtained his diploma in 2004 at the Lausanne Jazz School.

Alongside the release in 2006 of his first album Stream Out, in duo with the Frenchdrummer Sylvain Ghio, he won the Patino grant in collaboration with the International Cityof Art, Paris and several contests such as the “Montreux jazz Chrysler Award” in 2003, the “Friedlwald grant” in Zurich in 2005 as well as the “Award for Best Soloist” at the International Bern Festival in 2006. He was finalist of the International Jazz contest of la Défense in Paris the same year and won in 2010 with Marc Perrenoud Trio the ZKB Jazz contest in Zurich.

Since 2008, the group "Marc Perrenoud Trio" has given more than 300 concerts in all the major festivals and jazz clubs around the world.

The trio’s three albums have been respectively “Best jazz selling” in Switzerland (Logo, 2008), rewarded "revelation" by the French magazine Jazzmagazine (Two Lost Churches, 2012) and "revelation" by the music magazine of the BBC London and Jazzmagazine Paris.

His third trio CD, Vestry Lamento was rewarded “Editor’s pick January 2014” by the prestigious American magazine "Downbeat"

For the past 10 years, Marc has played in many clubs and festivals around the world including Montreux Jazz Festival (CH), Jazz at Lincoln Center, New-York (USA), Snug harbour, New-Orleans (USA), Upstairs Vitellos, Los Angeles (USA),Ronnie’s Scott, London (UK), Festival de la Défense, Paris (F) Festival jazz sur son 31, Toulouse (F), Duc des Lombards Paris (F), Strasbourg Jazzdor Festival (F), Sunside, Paris (F), Festival international de Clermont (F), EUNIC jazz Festival, Berlin (D), A Trane, Berlin (D) Unterfahrt, München (D), Eldenear Jazz Festival (D), Cully Jazz Festival (CH), Jazz no Jazz Festival, Zurich (CH) Schaffhausen jazz Festival (CH), Off Beat Basel (CH), Festival, Prague piano nights (CZ), Reduta, Praha (CZ), Jazz Docks, Praha (CZ), Budapest Take Five (HU) Jazz no Fundos, Sao Paulo (BRA), Triboz, Rio de Janeiro (BRA) Panama Jazz Festival (PAN), Buenos Aires International Jazz Festival (ARG), Rosario Jazz Festival (ARG), Montevideo Jazz Festival (UY), E.U International Jazz Festival, Santiago (CHE), JZ Shanghai, (CHI) Eastshore Beijing (CHI) Sapho Taiwan (TW), Cairo Opera house (EGY), Syria Jazz festival, Damas (SY), Global week for Syria Festival Beirut (LIB) Amman Jazz Festival, (JOR) Madajazzcar jazz fest. (MG)..etc

Marc Perrenoud’s 2013/2014 season includes the production by the Mezzo TV channel of a 90 minutes reportage of the concert of Marc Perrenoud Trio at Cully Jazz Festival, as well as playing at the Montreux Jazz Festival, the New York Lincoln Center, Snug Harbour in New Orleans, Ronnie Scott in London, Paris’ Duc des Lombards, the A Trane in Berlin, the Buenos Aires International Jazz Festival and the JZ in Shanghai.

In 2015, Marc plays in some of the most important jazz festival like London Jazz Festival, Basel off Beat or take part of the Beirut based festival « Global week for Syria ». He appears in many radio shows, amongst others, Jamie Cullums showcases on BBC2 London and WWOZ in New Orleans with Jerry Roll Justice. The same year, he plays a big solo tour from St Petersburg to Tripoli lebanon going through Munich, Zurich, Prag and Paris. He also take part of the Karama Festival in Amman Jordan and plays in a «female protection center» in Zarqa.

In December 2015 he records his firs solo piano album. ( Hamra, realize spring 2016)

He played with many musicians like Grégoire Maret, Kendrick Scott, Mina Agossi, Guillaume Perret, David Enhco, Baenz Oester, Marco Mueller, Cyril Regamey, Pedro Segundo, Pierre Audétat, Sylvain Ghio, Robert Kubyzin, Jeremy Bruyère, Claudio Strüby etc...

Marc Perrenoud teaches at the Conservatory of Geneva. He is co- founder and artistic director of the festival "the Athénéennes" in Geneva.

This album contains no booklet.