Customer Reviews

Jacques Loussier Plays Bach

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Being a huge fan of Bach's (I could honestly listen to his piano and vocal music all day long!) this album was a natural for me. After reading the other reviews online and hearing two friends rave about it, I decided to buy this CD and am awfully glad I did. What wonderful arrangements! This is definitely an album for both Bach lovers and jazz lovers. The source music is, of course, powerful and innovative; Loussier takes Bach and doesn't so much "transform" him as he does take the music to another level...keeping all the beauty. My personal favorite would be the very familiar "Air On A G String." Not better, mind you. Simply wonderful!

What Loussier has done here is so elegant and finessed, you almost forget how difficult it is to accomplish. Take music you already love, whose every rhythmic nuance is drilled into your head, and rearrange the rhythm section into jazz phrasings, improvise on the melody, and keep the best passages in the original form.

This is definitely not corny Mannheim Steamroller stuff. This is marvelous straight-ahead jazz on old European Standards. It seems so undoable as to be unthinkable, yet Loussier pulls it off as if it were obvious, and in a sense it is. But not since Walter/Wendy Carlos has anyone done it with such flair and respect.

I'm going to wear a hole in this CD. And I'm off to get the others.

My best friend introduced this CD to me, the very first time for me to explore how fantastic someone can make for classic music! I am a lover for both classic and jazz music. Loussier is the master for this beautiful combination! Treat yourself nice every now and then, and enjoy this CD with friends or along with a good bottle of wine! I can't help it but fall in love with his music, eventually become a collector of Loussier's work. And I am glad to tell you that friends around me start to appreciate classic music because of the Loussier... You will love him too!

This is a must for all those Trio lovers. Jacques Loussier is marvelous and his interpretation of Bach is marvelous. Bach would swing in his grave. This and the Satie interpretation are excellent, I am not a fan of the Vivaldi CD, it struggles a little to make the transition from classical to Jazz. And viewed as stand alone Jazz it is not great whereas the Bach and Satie would be great Jazz recordings even if they were not composed by great minds.

There isn't enough you can say about Jacques Loussier as well as his drummer or bassist. Together and by themselves, they all have amazing rythym. It is unfortunate that Loussier is so unknown. I, myself am not a very big fan of Bach, but Loussier makes me listen! The beat and the Trio's jazz genious make this album well-worth purchasing. Enjoy!

happens to be the most innovating interpretation of Bach. There are other recordings that the trio recorded on vinyl which included the Brandenburg Concerti - wish you would get those as well

This, when you boil it down to its essence, pretty much sounds like classical music played with a jazz beat rather than any extended jazz improvisations on classical pieces akin to the Wayne Shorter band's interpretation of "Valse Triste" on the "Soothsayer" album. In fact, this sounds less jazzy than Brubeck's 1950s classical themed album "Jazz Impressions of Eurasia" or Stan Getz's interpretation of Michel Legrand's "Back to Bach" on "Communications '72."

This is more like a jazz version of what Emerson, Lake & Palmer do with rock music. Loussier's technique is formidable and his band are total virtuosos on their instruments and the album as a whole is impressive and fun to hear when you're in a more upbeat and non-introspective mood but the deepness of the Bach pieces is definitely trivialized by doing it in the jazz idiom this straight. Jazz gets deep through improvisation. I think Loussier needed to give himself freer rein to express himself and improvise. If I want straight Bach I can go listen to the original pieces done by the best classical players of all time.

Threfore, this is a higher-than-average recommendation only if you don't mind some high-energy classical-light with overtones of cool-jazz hipness but if you want something state-of-the-art that really digs deep go listen to Brad Mehldau's trio offerings.

This recording, which was Loussier's first to be released on Telarc Jazz, is the least musically satisfying of his releases for that label. Apparently it was originally recorded in 1993, then released in 1996 under the Telarc umbrella. My reservations about this release do not concern the recorded sound, which is exemplary--close and powerful, bringing the trio right into your listening room--nor the quality of the playing, which is crisp and virtuosic. Instead, my reservations revolve around the arrangements, which to these ears seem to jump back and forth between "classical" and "jazz" too abruptly. In some of Loussier's other trio outings based on the music of classical composers, the arrangements seem to be better blended and more coherent, especially his Satie album, reviewed below, which is deeply delightful.

Still, it is always a pleasure to hear the music of Bach, and there are certainly some rewarding moments in this recording for fans of Bach and fans of jazz alike. For my money, though, the Bach arrangements on Loussier's other Telarc Bach recording, The Bach Book, are more satisfying, and I would recommend that disk over this one to listeners curious to see how a jazz trio might interpret the music of J.S. Bach.

If Bach himself could listen Loissier version of his music, he would say "he understood the escence". I'really enjoyed this cd, and I recommend it to every Bach lover, and to every good jazz lover.

If you like the fusion of classical with jazz(Forinstance"Jazz impressions of eurasia"you will love this disc.