Veröffentlichung Écoutez le Cinéma ! April 2013: Schifrin, Colombier, Petit

[Handstand]

Die nächsten drei Veröffentlichungen in der Reihe Écoutez le Cinéma ! erscheinen am 29. April 2013: Eine CD-Erstveröffentlichung eines Konzeptalbums von Lalo Schifrin, das bislang nur als LP erhältlich war, ein um eine neu aufgenommene Suite erweitertes (im Marketing irreführend als Erstveröffentlichung bezeichnetes) Re-Issue eines Musicalfilmsoundtracks von Michel Colombier sowie eine Jean-Claude Petit-Kompilation.

 

 

THERE'S A WHOLE LALO SCHIFRIN GOIN' ON (1968)
For the first time on CD, the imaginary soundtrack which Lalo Schifrin might have written for Luis Bunuel

1968 was a decisive year for the great Lalo Schifrin: in January he recorded his music for The Fox (with a theme made famous by Dim's lingerie adverts…), and in December he completed his unavoidably sacrosanct Bullitt. In between, as if taking a breather and recharging his batteries, he made an album under his own name – it appeared like a UFO – entitled There's a whole Lalo Schifrin goin' on. It came in humorous response to the Jerry Lee Lewis catch-phrase which described what was "going on", i.e. a Whole lotta shakin'. What was Lalo's record trying to do? To pervert fashionable dance-rhythms from the inside – whether they were pop or bossa nova – and give them a real twist. "This album," says Lalo today, "was a rather absurd writing-challenge, like self-provocation as a composer. I asked myself what would have happened if Luis Bunuel had been writing music. Would he have been capable of finding notes that were equivalent to Surrealism?" In the course of his own album, Schifrin pulls the pin on a few weird music-bombs straight out of his Dadaist imagination: he has a rhythm and blues chorus chanting clauses from a life-insurance contract, organizes a head-on collision between a cabaret tune and the Vienna School, and then transposes pro- and anti-Vietnam War issues onto a football field… Completed by a few other Schifrin gems from the Universal archives, this album – a first on CD – is the zaniest work ever recorded by the Argentinean master, the soundtrack to an imaginary film revered by a nucleus of faithful fans around the world. "Don't listen seriously to this album," he sums up, "the whole thing's a gag, a musical satire like an extravagant plunge into Surrealism." Meaning that if Lalo had been writing music for Bunuel, there would have been a Whole Lalo Schifrin goin' on.
16-page booklet, interview with Lalo Schifrin, 15 tracks (43 minutes of music).

1. Secret code
2. Dissolving
3. Machinations
4. Bride of the wind
5. Life insurance
6. How to open at will the most beautiful window
7. Vaccinated mushrooms
8. Two petals, a flower and a young girl
9. Wheat germ landscapes
10. Gentle earthquake
11. Hawks vs. doves
12. Lucille
13. Self-destruct
14. Another side of harry
15. Blues a-go-go
 

 

Michel Colombier

UNE CHAMBRE EN VILLE (1982)
Release coinciding with the exhibition entitled "The enchanting world of Jacques Demy" at France's "Cinémathèque".

In autumn 1982, Jacques Demy had this to say about his most recent feature-film Une chambre en ville: "There are few films I dreamed of in the same way as this one; this is my whole childhood, my blood, my life." This time Demy had removed the mask, saying goodbye to the jazz waltzes and bossa novas which had brought such a swirl to The Young Girls of Rochefort. Now his tone was serious: Une chambre en ville was a tragedy of society in music, and its lyricism was tormented. For the music, Demy turned to composer Michel Colombier, a prodigal prodigy discovered through his associations with Serge Gainsbourg, Pierre Henry and the singer Barbara. A brilliant ambassador of the new world balanced between two cultures, symphonic and pop, Colombier wrote a heartrending score for orchestra, voice and chorus which sublimated Demy's tale of the impossible love between a woman of the bourgeoisie (Dominique Sanda) and a metalworker on strike (Richard Berry). "For me," emphasized Colombier, "Une chambre en ville works like a tragedy which has some totally Russian excesses; the characters go from gales of laughter to the deepest despair." Here, for the first time, is the soundtrack for Une chambre en ville, restored from the original quarter-inch tapes for the occasion, and the restoration lends the work of Demy and Colombier a precision and power that no-one has been able to hear before. As a bonus, the album proposes a delicate thirteen-minute suite for piano conceived and performed by one of Colombier's young heirs, Grégoire Caux. As a complement to the 11CD box-set devoted to Demy and Michel Legrand, this album gives listeners the opportunity to rediscover the music of a film today considered as the dark gem of Jacques Demy, the great work of a mature composer.
20-page booklet, double CD, 28 tracks (1 hour 40 minutes of music).

Disque : 1

1. Generique - Colombier Michel
2. La premiere greve - Colombier Michel
3. Guilbaud et la baronne - Darrieux Danielle
4. Edith et sa mere - Darrieux Danielle
5. Violette amoureuse - Guyon Fabienne
6. Le cafe des chantiers - Colombier Michel
7. Dambiel et guilbaud - Revaux Jacques
8. Violette et sa mere - Guyon Fabienne
9. La cartomancienne - Roussel Marie-France
10. Edmond et edith - Blanes Georges
11. La casquette - Revaux Jacques
12. La rencontre - Revaux Jacques
13. La chambre d'hôtel - Revaux Jacques
14. La visite d'edmond - Darrieux Danielle

Disque : 2

1. Une chambre en ville - Revaux Jacques
2. Violette et dambiel - Franck Aldo
3. Chez la baronne - Franck Aldo
4. L'amour d'edith - Darrieux Danielle
5. Le cafe de l'aube - Franck Aldo
6. Dans la gueule du loup - Darrieux Danielle
7. La rupture - Guyon Fabienne
8. Le suicide d'edmond - Davis Florence
9. Le recit d'edith - Darrieux Danielle
10. La poupée - Davis Florence
11. Madame pelletier et sa fille - Guyon Fabienne
12. La deuxieme greve - Darrieux Danielle
13. La mort des amants - Darrieux Danielle
14. Une chambre en ville - Caux Gregoire

 

 

L'ESSENTIEL DE JEAN-CLAUDE PETIT
Released at the same time as the film Hôtel Normandy reaches French cinemas (May 8)

May 8 sees the release of the new Charles Némès film Hôtel Normandy, which marks the return to the cinema-circuit of composer Jean-Claude Petit, this time with a sparkling romantic comedy featuring Héléna Noguerra and Eric Elmosnino. So the time is right to rediscover some of Petit's work in films with this Essential Jean-Claude Petit anthology conceived as a free and sentimental stroll through thirty years of films. Among the essentials, of course, you can find the great hits Jean de Florette, Cyrano de Bergerac or Le Hussard sur le toit, which gave Petit his image, that of a composer with an exceptional gift for reinventing the music of the past. It's a flattering image, but a deceptive one, because Petit shows himself just as much at ease in contemporary comedy (Le Zèbre), the use of jazz musicians with an orchestra (Toots Thielemans in the American series Touch and die) or other collaborations with some of the pop world's great figures like Alain Souchon or Jacques Higelin. From the panpipes of Gheorghe Zamfir to the Irish sounds of The Playboys, the fate of Les Misérables or Lumumba, this album tells the story of both the past (Mayrig, Le château des oliviers) and the present (Danse avec lui, Le Passager de l'été, Hôtel Normandy) of a symphonic musician with a passion for jazz. "I've been writing for films for thirty years and the exercise hasn't made me blasé," says Petit. "To me, film-music is definitely the ideal form of expression to synthesize my different cultures." L'Essentiel de Jean-Claude Petit: essential and indispensable.
12-page booklet, interview with Jean-Claude Petit, 24 tracks (77 minutes of music).

1. Jean de florette
2. Cyrano de bergerac - Caens Thierry
3. Beaumarchais
4. Mayrig
5. Dele yaman
6. Hôtel normandy
7. La chanson du zebre - Souchon Alain
8. Provence
9. Touch and die - Thielemans Toots
10. Le hussard sur le toit
11. Desire
12. Danse avec lui
13. Les miserables
14. Le discours
15. Le caviar rouge
16. Twenty years later
17. Tristesse et beaute
18. Sexes tres opposes
19. End credits
20. Savannah - Higelin Jacques
21. Messieurs les enfants
22. End credits
23. Le fils
24. Epilogue
 

 

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Conception et réalisation/Concept and realization: Stéphane Lerouge. Conception graphique/Graphic concepts: Jérôme Witz & Gilles Guerlet, E-lements. Restauration sonore et mastering/Sound restoration and mastering: Alexis Frenkel & Christophe Henault, Art et Son Studio.

[Dakota]

Der Colombier ist toll. Wusste gar nicht das der schon vergriffen war,...