Word: terrasson
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Dates: during 1995-1995
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...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...
...outdo one another on showy new solo albums and jostling for attention in nightclubs from Bourbon Street to Greenwich Village, competition on the keyboards is more intense than it has been in years. In the midst of all this musical gunslinging, it would be easy to overlook Jacky Terrasson, a newcomer from Paris. But that would be a mistake...
...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...
What makes the place so exceptional? For one thing, the acoustics are a marvel. The room is a long triangle with the stage at the apex, and there isn't a dead spot anywhere. "It's like playing inside a great horn," says piano veteran Tommy Flanagan. To Jacky Terrasson, a fast-rising young pianist who made his Vanguard debut three years ago, what's important is "the vibes-all your heroes have been there before, and you get this incredible energy." Not even a jazz immortal like Sonny Rollins is immune to the aura. "You feel the history...