Alexis Tcholakian
jazz pianist - composer
- You are actually listening to " My one and only love " from the new Cd's " LIGHT AHEAD "
PRESS
Press articles selection / Sélection d'articles de presse
Poetic Memory
Live @ the Sunside
Le trio du pianiste de jazz Alexis Tcholakian, c’est-à -dire Claude Mouton à la contrebasse et Thierry Tardieu à la batterie, nous revient avec un enregistrement effectué live en 2010 au Sunside (voir article sur l'album Play Time).
Le trio a toujours cette subtilité, cette fluidité, cette inventivité, cette musicalité qu’on lui connaît, et toujours cette complicité et cette façon de jouer à l’écoute les uns des autres, mais les voici dans un programme différent, avec une Sicilienne de Bach, un Prélude n°4 op.28 de Chopin et un Choral n° 1 conjugué à un Stabat Mater de Schubert qui s’installent au milieu de compositions d’Alexis Tcholakian, et d’airs de Michel Petrucciani et de Baden Powell. Un jazz énergique teinté de classique, pour les sources, et de Brésil, pour le traitement, puisque le
morceau de Petru s’appelle « Brazilian Like », le Baden Powell «Samba em preludio » et que les compositions de Tcholakian, « Night Reflections », « Fragile » et « A Eschola de ser feliz » ont des aspects brésiliens. Le batteur et le contrebassiste y développent d’ailleurs, un beat impeccable et très inventif. Du beau jazz et même du très bon.
Michel Bedin | 13 Octobre 2011
Posted in TopAudio - Musique
Notre avis : (4/5)
Hidden Face
Search for Peace
From the very opening notes I knew this was a great record. It was a real – and rare – case of love at first sight!
Speech conveys in a scattering of words what we believe ourselves to ‘be’. Music on the other hand has the quicksilver power to express through sound what we actually are. Alexis’s charismatic music, sifted with apposite feeling, testifies to this. His inspired piano-playing never falls prey to the traps of mere prettiness or pathos, but always navigates by the compass of an intense and natural song; the one we seek deep inside. His oblique style is balanced between light and dark and he knows how to render those cloudy nuances and the ebb and flow of ideas in exact language. Nowadays this is quite uncommon in the lonely exercise that is the solo. The choice of standards (from « For all we know » to « A child is born ») and their sequencing are a model of the genre. Alexis imbues each melody (like the sublime « Blame it on my youth ») with elegance, dispensing with all extraneous embellishment. There is a kind of gentle melancholy running through this music of embers and mists to which I am very susceptible; the keyboard shimmers under his fingers and illuminates the silence with a sort of moonlight. These, in sum, are my impressions of listening to « Search for peace », the fourth album, after « Hidden Face » (2004), « Le Songe de l’Athanor » (98) and « Point de vue » (96), from this rare and reserved pianist, who today has ensconced himself in his music like a hermit. Alexis deserves to be recognized today for his true worth. Therefore I have just one thing to ask of you. Please listen with care to this album suffused with harmonious and melodic elegance. You won’t regret it.
Pascal Anquetil (for Search for Peace CD 2008)
Head of CIJ (Jazz Information Centre) Irma, journalist for Jazzman - Paris-France
Alexis Tcholakian is undoubtedly an artist under influence. This influence goes mainly straight back to the joy of Keith Jarrett with whom he shares the soft touches. He knows to be silent but prefers both sounds and pictures. He invents well balanced variations around the tempo. Both a traveller and a dreamer, he takes us along far away roads to far away sounds and rituals. All alone but his piano and his compositions, he is bold and inventive, noisy and talkative, but most of all, he is in love .. in love with every moment, every suspending moment, in love with each picture or sound his music draws, in love with life. Through romantic fables, he tells us about patience, time, the return of a loved one, nostalgia. He generously invites us into his mind and universe. He takes us around, generous and spontaneous. He knows how beauty can be mysterious. Alexis Tcholakian hidden face shows when he teams up with fellow jazzmen : Claude Mouton on double bass and Guillaume Dommartin on drums. This trio session required only one take and limited time. You can smell the cigarette and leather seats in the jazz club. You can just about hear the glass rattling in the back. You definitely feel at the Sunside or the Duc, the album shines of live spontaneity and intimacy, both that you can only find while ordering a drink in one of these classy clubs. The influences of Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett are real and used wisely. This influence shines (maybe a little too much) on "Someday my prince will come" where the pianist show tremendous respect for Bill Evans interpretation at the Montreux Jazz Festival. Alexis Tcholakian enjoys playing with his Trio. You can tell by the way he interacts with both musicians during the performances. Complicity. Try the beautiful cover of "When Sunny gets blue" where he delivers for Claude Mouton to take over. The entire album is supported by great drum work from Guillaume Dommartin, sometimes almost Latin style, especially with "Bye Bye Blackbird" or "Softly as in a morning sunrise". The album is full of classics, highly enjoyable to the ear and with great interest to who may listen in.
RC & JMG (Webzine DNG) September 2004 Alexis Tcholakian .. Hidden Face solo/trio .. Soul Motions Records
Self Portrait (DVD)
ALEXIS TCHOLAKIAN
Self Portrait/Piano
Alexis Tcholakian (p). 11 octobre 2007.
*** POUR LA MUSIQUE
Un concert d’Alexis Tcholakian à l’Archipel, l’assurance d’écouter le beau piano d’un musicien exigeant malheureusement guère connu en dehors d’un cercle restreint d’amateurs. Habité par son art, Alexis prend le temps de faire chanter ses notes. Elles sont comme les voiles d’un grand navire qui tangue au rythme d’une mer calme. Elles se regroupent dans des accords qui bercent et font rêver. Les standards inspirent ce pianiste sensible et romantique qui impose ses propres cadences, improvise sur les accords des thèmes, les cajole, tourne autour pour mieux les célébrer. Alexis Tcholakian aime les notes perlées et délicates. Ses versions de My Foolish Heart et de I Hear a Rapsody restent profondément marquées par le piano de Bill Evans et ses propres compositions baignent dans un grand raffinement harmonique. Mais pourquoi un concert filmé qui n’apporte rien à la musique ? Loin de varier les angles de prises de vues, les caméras multiplient les plans fixes. Alexis Tcholakian ne communique pas avec son public, n’annonce pas les morceaux qu’il reprend. On écoute aussi bien sans images ce très grand mélodiste.
Pierre de Chocqueuse (JAZZMAN MARS 2009)
Play Time (DVD)
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Alexis Tcholakian Trio |
4 août 2010 |
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Play Time |
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Nouveauté-Sélection (www.aphrodite-records.com)
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Le Monde – July 5, 1997
Alexis Tcholakian Trio – Point de Vue
One becomes easily quickly hooked on this first new album of the Trio. It is not only a group of young talent that displays its extraordinary musicality and virtuosity, but one feels the overflow of joy in the music making and that is what jazz is all about. The talented musicians certainly listened to the John Coltrane Quartet, the Ahmad Jamal Trio and Miles Davis Quintet, certainly listened to the electric years and where inspired by colours and passages, but they certainly did not duplicate the music of the past but only never to forget it. Alexis Tcholakian, the pianist, shows tremendous lyrical phrasing and fluidity. He has a magical left hand which moved gracefully during each melody. The electric cello gives the ensemble a very unusual colour for it is not a regular instrument for a jazz trio. Alain Grange is the cellist and displays great quality with his instrument. As for the classy drummer Hidehiko Kan, he contributes his fantastic drive to the trio. All of this, many can do, few can master, they seem to pull it off.
Sylvain Siclier
Point de Vue
Le Songe de l'Athanor
Jazzman *** - June 1999
Alexis Tcholakian Trio – Le songe de l'athanor
The second new album by pianist Alexis Tcholakian confirms what a great show is trio is. Let's underline here the absolute great taste shown by Bernard Rabaud, owner and director of the Petit Opportun in Paris, a regular setting this ensemble. On this album, "you don't know what love is" was recorded in June 1998 in this same club which had welcomed the band in March. The Trio received impeccable assistance dealing with sound engineering. With a repertoire essentially inspired by their pianist, the Trio bring there music to life from one composition to the next. The presence of an electric cellist (Alain Grange), a authentic specialist of this instrument, brings along a diversity of colours, walking bass and special effects such as squeaking and screaming as in "two children" which contrasts with harmonic factors. This Trio definitely specializes in very frequent metrical changes with stunning control such as in "Things I never told you" and "le songe de l'athanor". The harmonic approach of "Body & Soul" (where the pianist is featured solo) is interesting as is the rhythm overlapping. With "Un jour ou l'autre", the drummer, Hidehiko Kan also shares some great improvisations with the pianist. This completely unique approach with great fluidity between musical exchanges and crossing of ideas and expressions is extremely well done.
Those who take a fancy to the art of trio should definitely turn their heads in this direction.
Stéphane Carini
Inner Voice Vol.1
Alexis Tcholakian Trio
Jazz Magazine 31 Aug 2018
Inner Voice Vol.1 - 1 CD STUDIO DU SOUS-SOL
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Newly out, here the Marseille pianist delivers his first trio album since "Poetic Memory" (2011). Surrounded by Lilian Bencini and Cédrick Bec, he reaffirms his talent as a composer with a completely original repertoire: Mirage immediately illustrates a sense of narrative that is rich in contrasts and colours. As a soloist, he continues an Evansian tradition right up to the choice of metrics (Valentine) and shows from beginning to end a concern for cohesion and sharing with two attentive and inspired partners.
Vincent Cotro
Alexis Tcholakian Trio
Jazz Hot n°684, summer 2018
Inner Voice. Vol.1
Mirage, Letter to the Unspeakable, Love Letter, Standing at Crossroads, Valentine, Trajectoire, Un Monde de silence
Alexis Tcholakian (p), Lilian Bencini (b), Cédrick Bec (dm)
Recorded on December 15 and 16, 2017, Argenteuil (95)
Duration: 50' 50' 50'''
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After going on an eventful musical journey before focusing on jazz, and for his fifth trio album, pianist Alexis Tcholakian offers us great accomplishment in this art of trio. He has surrounded himself with two musicians who perfectly fit his music, who know how to blend into his compositions and improvise in the same spirit. Alexis Tcholakian has an airy, clear, singing style of playing. He favours melody, which does not however preclude some subtleties of phrasing and harmony. The double bass player plays in the same vein, with melodic solos, a pure sound and a clean style, he is remarkable with the arco; as can be heard in "Love Letter", taken first ad libitum, then the piano comes in, we have beautiful double bass-piano responses, with repeated melodic phrases, all somewhat following the rhapsody form. As for the drummer, he is like a fish in the water: he unfolds polyrhythmic rolls just so, anchoring the trio with subtle and abundant drumming, as can be heard in "Standing at Crossroads", a pioneering title since we are dealing with a trio of fairly classic construction that stands at the crossroads of mainstream jazz and which above all plays its own and enchanting song.
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Serge Baudot