Having often heard Yannick Delez in concert, I felt that the full expression of his creative spontaneity revealed itself only while performing before a receptive audience. However, his remarkable new album faithfully and mysteriously expresses the pure presence of his music. I say mysteriously because words alone cannot express this artist's luminous albeit nostalgic lyricism. His free, generous, madly chanting melodic line is as precise as an etching, even as it merges itself in unrelenting pointillism. Ever vibrant and inventive, it attains a purity of form far removed from minimalism`s mechanical austerity. His keyboard immerses itself with minute variation in a constant process of renewal. Development of texture and time, reversal of tonal divisions, sliding from monophony to polyphony... there is something miraculous in this artist`s work. Listen to his interpretation of "Solar" and you will understand. His virtuosity is unique and unpretentious. He has indeed created his own distinctive style. With"Boreales", it is more difficult than ever before to define Yannick Delez`s art. He revisits and frees himself from the techniques which influenced the development of his work. And if he reminds us that he is a jazz pianist, although not without irony in some of his brilliant "Miniatures" his ballads are ripe with truly inspired romanticism (All the things you are, Vignette), and the intimate, intrinsically epic spirit of the Brahms-like ballad that seems to inhabit certain of his compositions (Concave, Boreales). There is nothing monotone in his music but rather a unique sense of the monochromatic. His is a melodic world which has incorporated and surpassed the rules of jazz. It explores a diversity of colours in subtly modulated harmonic context employing asymmetric crystalline movement rather than ordinary formal construction. It is indeed difficult to describe such lyricism. Leaving all analysis behind, we can truly say that Yannick Delez has the capacity to capture the intensity of the moment which is the privilege of great musicians. One must plunge completely into "Boreales" or simply walk the other way. Valentin Peiry