A poetic album, full of memories…of guitar playing, country songs, jazz, contemporary music, - with no a priori. Melodies inspired by different beings, places, and music, emotions, shared pleasures from Rome (its temples and its times) to Paris (its tower and its turnings) via Venice and its pictures. Writing and improvisation, words said and unsaid, written and unwritten … « Roses of all colours, for their beauty and their mystery. Roots for their resistance and their ramifications. A journey by road and by dreams. Memories of first times. The pleasure of the first notes. Those chords that vibrate. A group of friends. The pleasure of playing and playing with pleasure. Simple. Gymnastics of « a priori »; ours and others'. Towns, train stations, earth and sky. My country has changed indeed. … a hexagon on top and at the bottom a boot.». 

ROSES & ROOTS was recorded in 2004 with the prestigious and indispensable guest, the drummer Joey Baron, Riccardo Del Fra (double bass), Jean-Luc Landsweerdt (drums), Bruno Ruder (piano) Sylvain Gontard (trumpet and saxhorn), Sylvain Rifflet (tenor saxophone and clarinet), Nacim Brahimi (alto saxophone), Jean-Philippe Muvien (guitar), Rémy Dumoulin (tenor and soprano saxophone), François Bonhomme (horn), Vincent Le Quang (soprano saxophone), as well as a young string quartet (Saori Furukawa : violin, Sophie Magnien : cello, Roland Arnassalon, violin, François Riou, alto).

Jazoo Project : Sylvain Gontard, Jean-Luc Landsweerdt, Sylvain Rifflet, Riccardo Del Fra, Nacim Brahimi, Bruno Ruder


The love of (and need for) silence. He wrote on the bottom of the page as if he were giving a password: «The love of silence ». When we met we immediately understood what the other meant even though no words were spoken. At that time we never really felt the need to speak much. Not having had to make any promises to each other, to exchange instructions - a rare occurrence in a world when we are always sounding each other out. We never felt the temptation to push our reserve and we let it do the bulk of the work for us. Silence contains more love than refusal or enigma.

It contains more love than silence: this is the first lesson. Question the silence of love which has so many beautiful, sad songs on the tip of its tongue, waning into infinity You Don't Know What Love Is and But Not For Me… Enter through the hall of gracious melodies into this demanding and inevitably iconoclastic religion of silence that music seems to set up against itself…prepare yourself for the secret ceremonies that the public doesn't want to know about, and for the voluptuous sacrileges within the bare walls…Don't break the silence except as a last resort so as not to break the mirror (or to stop your reflection coagulating into the silver backing)… Don't break anything at all, for that matter, instead glide, like in the floating dream of Toru… Enter slowly into the silence. Melt into it. Open yourself to it. And delay for as long as possible this fragile balance, resist on this razor's edge, dividing – and joining together – the innocence and the supreme initiation … at the edge of silence, it is advisable, even while leaning over perilously, to act with caution. You are face to face with Carpaccio's dragon. If a musician masters this technique, he won't walk anywhere without listening to the sound of his steps. He will become his own cortege. And he, my friend, tells me still, recalling his days with a trumpet player we hold dear: « To go in the same direction as him implies controlling silence… You have to learn how to occupy the space without overwhelming it. »

The second lesson : Love without silence is love without words : it can't be relied on. He added something, between brackets : « The love of (and the need for) silence. » Artists know that, strangely, it is much more difficult to show need than love. It requires more time, more zeal, more self-sacrifice. Creating needs, in art is no mean feat. Seeking truth against nature. But here is the ultimate key : love and need : Roots and roses. Here is the story of this true story, told here in a moving form, seemingly capricious, but studied and discretely subtle. Told, like a story, by twists and deviations, along an itinerary of forking paths, of roads leading to or away from Rome, of steps that chase the night. Following an odyssey full of bends, of shorelines, of gardens, of precious memories of houses in the middle of one's memories, dotted with ghosts of lagoons, of visions speaking like father and sea the language of pearl fishermen. Need, then, the flower of love. With a free impulse it acts to produce a constraint. A strange project ? Fierce ambition, extremely unrewarding. Music is the result not of what is spared, but of what is rejected. It is approached, not by stupendous leaps, irrepressible strides, but by a series of amputations. Obviously silence is asceticism, that is to say, a fertile deprivation. It requires the spirit of destitution. To be in need of silence is simply to place one's own initiative in need. This is what makes silence so difficult to frequent. This is what makes it indispensable. But it will only be necessary for poets. To gardeners of the invisible. To those who know how to listen to the sea in churches, in paintings or at the bottom of their plate.

The third lesson : Don't count on love to fall in love with silence. In Venice we will run into each other one day or another. There will be no need to say hello, we will recognise each other from a far. We will let the town speak for us. We will let it repeat, as always, that it is the only futuristic town that remains in this world, and the only one that knows, for sure, that it will die. That's all it has been doing for centuries, to bring back the ultimate pearl, to celebrate from the bottom of its soul the love of life… And jazz also does no more than that, since Storyville, but these are beautiful children, that Riccardo brings to life everyday. Like Venice , they will get married to the waves.

The last lesson : forget these lessons ; become immortal in your lifetime, at least once.

Alain Gerber
(text written to accompany the album Roses & Roots)