Satie: Gymnopédies & Gnossiennes cover

Satie: Gymnopédies & Gnossiennes

Composer
Recorded
Released

Jazz pianist Jacques Loussier is perhaps best known for his swinging trio arrangements of music by Johann Sebastian Bach, music that lends itself particularly nicely to that kind of treatment because it tends to be melodically attractive, harmonically complex, and rhythmically quite square – take a Bach melody and swing it, and the results are almost always really fun. But unlike Bach, Eric Satie was a willfully weird composer, and the piano suites he titled Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes are slow, repetitive, and sometimes written in free time, which creates some challenges for putting them into a jazz setting. But Loussier does a fine job here – much of the music may be hard to recognize, but the arrangements are gorgeous; note in particular the busy bass part on the second variation on “Gymnopédie No. 1.”

Rick Anderson

Suggestions
Indicum cover

Indicum

Bobo Stenson
Quesaco? cover

Quesaco?

Paris Combo
Tokyo Adagio cover

Tokyo Adagio

Charlie Haden, Gonzalo Rubalcaba
Warp cover

Warp

Jon Balke
The Classic Quartet cover

The Classic Quartet

Thelonious Monk
Floating cover

Floating

Fred Hersch
Scarlatti: 52 Sonatas cover

Scarlatti: 52 Sonatas

Domenico Scarlatti, Lucas Debargue
Live in Europe cover

Live in Europe

Fred Hersch Trio
Calendar Days cover

Calendar Days

The Rocket Summer
Open Book cover

Open Book

Fred Hersch
Castles in the Air cover

Castles in the Air

Stan Strickland, Christine Van Arsdale, Claire Ritter, Steve Swallow, Andrew Blickenderfer, Takaaki Masuko, Johannes Ammon