Word: terrasson
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Terrasson, 32, has always been an original pianist, but the pleasures of his first two albums tended to be clever, surface ones. This CD, recorded live, is a breakthrough, thanks in no small part to the fact that his trio (with bassist Ugonna Okegwo and drummer Leon Parker) has been playing together for more than six years--a rarity in the harsh economic climate of today's jazz world. On a set of standards sprinkled with Terrasson originals, the trio plays softly and sparely, at times swinging as much by implication as by force. Melodies have a way of slithering...
...based on an Egyptian "mystery system," embodied in the secret initiation rites of certain ancient religious cults. Lefkowitz makes the ingenious but plausible argument that the little we know about those ceremonies comes not from historical sources but from an 18th century novel, Sethos, by the French Abbe Jean Terrasson (1670-1750). His fanciful speculations about old Egypt were incorporated into Masonic rituals. Thus the Afrocentrists' purported knowledge of Egypt, Lefkowitz contends, can be traced back to the mystical lore of black Masonic lodges in the West Indies...
...JACKY TERRASSON Jacky Terrasson (Blue Note). Seated at the piano, this 30-year-old Parisian import doesn't just play a song; he seizes it, takes it through his own looking glass and refracts it in ways that squeeze fresh thrills out of old Rodgers and Hart and Cole Porter jazz standards. Terrasson's debut served notice that here is a star in the making...
...Terrasson, 29, comes to the game with a well-formed sound that relies on inventiveness and vision rather than pure razzle-dazzle. Equipped with a degree in classical piano from the Parisian conservatory Lycee Lamartine, which he topped off with a year of jazz studies at Boston's rigorous Berklee College of Music, Terrasson mixes a thorough knowledge of the jazz canon--from Cole Porter to Duke Ellington to Miles Davis--with a rich harmonic sense and a carefully reined iconoclasm. On his debut album, Jacky Terrasson (Blue Note), he squeezes fresh insight and nuance out of fossilized tunes like...
Like many of the new young pianists, Terrasson has speed to burn, and he can lay down impressive, swirling solos in the rushing, post-bop style in vogue today. He undergirds his right-hand notes with layers of richly configured chords in the complex manner of pianists like Bill Evans and Hank Jones. Occasionally Terrasson will use three or four notes when one would suffice. But his revitalization of the standards is what's getting him deserved notice. That's because Terrasson's style--a fertile union of jazz avant-garde and classical--is recognizably a mix of controlled aggression...