A key figure in creative and inspired french jazz, Émile Parisien has travelled through the early part of this century in a singular way: a budding young musician from Marciac at the turn of the millennium, the alto and soprano saxophonist has worked hard to explore tradition and history while going far beyond them. This evolution owes much to the curiosity of Émile Parisien, whose profile as a rising jazz star has gradually been refined to reveal a complex artist with a sharp mind.
From his collaborations with Daniel Humair, Vincent Peirani, Joachim Kühn and Michel Portal to his innovations with Jeff Mills and his ACT quartet, Émile Parisien has established himself in France and on a European scale as a catalyst for new ideas, even on the fringes of established territories (most recently in the XXXX project, alongside Wollny, Lefebvre and Lillinger, also with ACT).
His work is a line drawn between the two poles of a music in movement which finds, in the stylistic explosion and the exaltation of the 2020s, an obvious resonance box: within a reality with increasingly blurred aesthetic boundaries, the compass matters less than intuition.
This is the philosophy behind Émile Parisien’s new sextet, Louise, alongside Frenchmen Roberto Negro and Manu Codjia, thanks to which the saxophonist is crossing the Atlantic to join forces with Americans Joe Martin, Nasheet Waits and Theo Croker. His most ambitious project to date, without a doubt.
6 DOIN' JAZZ, behind the scenes of a tour with Émile Parisien
Photo credit: Oliver Abels
