 Né en 1930, Claude Bolling, passé par le Conservatoire de Nice, est très tôt attiré par le Ragtime et le Boogie-woogie. Dès 14 ans, déjà pianiste confirmé, il joue avec Lionel Hampton et Kenny Clarke. Il deviendra rapidement le jazzman français le plus populaire. Il compose une multitude de musiques devenues célèbres pour le cinéma et la télévision dont les plus marquantes restent Borsalino et les Brigades du tigre. Musicien éclectique et ouvert, il rencontre le guitariste Alexandre Lagoya, alors au sommet de son art, lui dédiant en 1975 un concerto pour guitare et piano jazz trio qu’ils jouent ensemble. Le succès est mitigé. La guitare classique, instrument intimiste, ne trouve à l’évidence pas sa place parmi un piano, une basse et une batterie. Conscient de ce problème, il compose en 1994 une sonate pour guitare, composition hybride qui malgré certaines phrases musicales innovantes et évocatrices ne s’impose pas durablement dans le répertoire guitaristique. Le concerto est ici remis à l’honneur par le Claude Quartet avec un certain bonheur et le guitariste Duilio Meucci livre une solide interprétation de la sonate, particulièrement dans le très virtuose Fergoso. Un disque à découvrir surtout pour les inconditionnels de Claude Bolling. (Philippe Zanoly) Now 86 years old, Claude Bolling was a leading light in French jazz for over 60 years, winning his first competition as a prodigious pianist at the age of 14 and soon afterwards forming his first band. His eponymous big band has been a fixture on the international circuit for decades, and with it he made the first unabridged recording of Duke Ellington’s magnum opus, the Black, Brown and Beige suite. Bolling engaged in stylish crossover projects with many classically trained French soloists of his generation, among them the flautist Jean-Pierre Rampal (Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano, 1975) and the trumpeter Maurice André (Toot Suite, 1981). This concerto works the other way around, bringing formal, if not strictly Classical, constraints to bear on a quintessential instrumentation for mid-20th-century jazz, the guitar quartet. The concerto is not an abstract three-movement form but a sequence of seven character-pieces whose melodic and rhythmic flavour may be scented from their titles, including ‘Hispanic Dance’, ‘Mexicaine’ and ‘Africaine’. Blues, swing and bossa-nova are all synthsised by Bolling with tremendous verve for the combination at hand. Listen out, too, for the neo-Baroque fantasy of the ‘Invention’, where Bolling shows he knows his counterpoint as well as Jacques Loussier… Likewise, the Guitar Sonata does not bow the knee too deeply to Classical precedents, with its Jazzo Brasileiro setting the tone for a work full of virtuoso pyrotechnics. Neither Sonata nor Concerto has recently been recorded; the young Italian guitarist Duilio Meucci joins such illustrious company on disc as Angel Romero and Alexander Lagoya, accompanied respectively by George Shearing and the composer himself.
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