Jean Kapsa

Study

Here is a new filmed piece on the piano.

The Mudd Show x Le Chant des Oiseaux

Watch the full set recorded last summer by The Mudd Show at Atipik’s festival Le Chant des Oiseaux near Marseille, France.

Popup du Label

Playing a solo piano concert this evening at Popup du Label in Paris, opening for Retriever.

Screening in Paris

La dernière rive will be screened this Tuesday 30th at Centre Wallonie Bruxelles in Paris.

Hermeto Pascoal

Remembering Hermeto Pascoal , who has just passed away and whom I met at Recife Jazz Festival in 2015 where we were playing on the same stage. Alongside other instruments, he had set up a small swimming pool on stage, two microphones above it, and was playing percussion with it or blowing his horn into the water.

Molenbeek

Birthday Suit

I just posted new video clip at the piano. This is actually an excerpt from a piece I composed for a choreography by Julie Compans — Bleu, le ciel comme limite — in which I’m playing the piano.

Fort de Mont-Dauphin

Roche Parnal

Au moulinage

Festival d’Alba

Fire

Festival Le Chant des Oiseaux

Chateau de Chamarande

Buttes Chaumont

Hopla Festival

Chateau de Monteleger

Amphithéâtre de l’Opéra Bastille

La Dernière Rive

Proud to announce the world premiere for La Dernière Rive ( The Last Shore ), directed by Jean-François Ravagnan, for which I composed the music. The film will be screened on April 10 and 11, at Visions du Réel International Film Festival in Nyon, Switzerland. In January 2017, a video showing a young Gambian man named Pateh Sabally drowning in the waters of Venice’s Grand Canal went viral on…

Pulsar-23 again

Just posted another improv with the Pulsar-23. Sequencing externally this time.

Electro Harmonix EL34

A tube in my amp recently gave up the ghost. It was one of the four KT88 tubes in the amplifier stage. I’d never changed tubes in the three years I’ve had this amp, changing just one tube was a bit risky and not very coherent in technical and sonic terms, so I decided to change the four original Cayin tubes. I had no reference or possible comparison with other tubes and I wanted to try something…

Saou

Studio Micadanses

Passage de la Bonne Graine

Something soothing

I left the city at 1am. The radio was blaring news about relations between the United States and Russia. I left the station on long enough to find my way to the freeway. A matter of a few minutes no doubt, then it would be straight on for an hour and a half. Still a little lively, the streets were dotted with passers-by finishing their conversations before heading home, then quickly the sidewalks…

The Waiting Room

I enter the waiting room. The smell of hot cigarettes gets to me. With the door open, I stand still and hesitate to turn around and wait outside, but I decide to stay. Serves me right for always being early. I slowly enter this small, plain room with its light, sober walls. Two people are already waiting, one on a sofa and the other sitting at a round table, a cane resting on the table next to the…

Memories of Tomorrow

Worked a bit on Keith Jarrett’ Memories of Tomorrow today on the piano, a tune I’ve already played several times in the past. This is actually the last piece of the Köln Concert , originally named Köln, January 24, 1975 Part IIc . This time I tried different things for the left hand, first in the low register with open chords and a rather supple rhythmic pattern, then in the medium register with…

Le Chant des Oiseaux

I met the Atipik crew last october on La Canebière avenue in Marseille while I was storing my music equipment after a show, and now I’m happy to be part of Le Chant des Oiseaux next edition that will take place mid-June in France. Registrations are open for a limited number of tickets. If you plan to come, let me know . Update: Watch the full video of the first set here .

Choices made

Almost twenty years ago, I was a music student in a jazz school near Paris. For the piano class, there were four of us pianists taking lessons at the same time around the piano, so each student could observe what the other was doing during the exercises, and then we’d often share our ideas. It just so happened that diminished chords featured from time to time in our studies and discussions. Their…

What Remains Of Our Dreams

A few weeks ago, while sitting on a train to Paris, I stumbled across writer Flore Vasseur . I’d just read her book What Remains Of Our Dreams on the life of Aaron Swartz , an American internet activist, my age, whose inspiring journey I knew from following his writings in the late 2000s and early 2010s, and whose death had left a deep impression on me. In her book, Flore Vasseur recounts her…

Nougats