Julien Pontvianne (Fr) / saxophone, composition
Isabel Sörling (Sw) / voice
Francesco Diodati (It) / guitar
Adèle Viret (Fr) / cello
Alexandre Herer (Fr) / keyboards
Matteo Bortone (It) / bass
“the superior and totally original beauty of Abhra is litteraly mind-blowing. More than music, the essence of music. (Bruno Guermonprez, Jazz News)
"A music in a state of levitation" (Denis Desassis, Citizen Jazz)
"An album full of hope, an ethic of slowness."(Ludovic Florin, Improjazz)
Abhra – Sanskrit word for atmosphere, emptiness… - was originally commissioned by the Centre International des Musiques Nomades and the Festival Détours de Babel in Grenoble, France, in 2014. Abhra was then exploring the diary of Henry David Thoreau, an American philosopher, poet and scholar born in 1817. Thoreau puts nature at the centre of his thought, from what he extracts a moral - praise to the independence, to the simplicity, to the hedonistic asceticism… To be and settle in the world, it is enough to breath, taste, touch, look, listen to the silence, feel, contemplate, observe… An album was released in 2016 on both labels Onze Heures Onze and Auand.
Continuing this work, Abhra's new repertoire is written around poems about water. Water is explored in seven texts by women and men from seven different countries, from Raquel Illonde (Guinea) to Emily Dickinson (USA), Nazim Hikmet (Turkey, Pryal Gagan (India)…
Julien Pontvianne and Abhra offer a deep immersion in a delicate, intimate universe, stubbornly questioning the role of the voice, the sonic matter, the resonant, the melody and the forms of the song…