Featured artist:
SYLVAIN PROVOST
If you’ve
been among the very best in your chosen field (jazz piano) over
a long career, there will invariably come a time when what you
say carries as much weight as what you play. So when pianist Oliver
Jones, second perhaps only to the great Oscar Peterson in the
genre, sings the praises of Montreal jazz guitarist Sylvain Provost,
we take notice – and listen.
Among
the many pleasures that recommend themselves to the sophisticated
listener in Sylvain Provost’s latest CD, Désirs
Démodés, is his ease and fluency in different
styles of guitar. Provost confesses that he might have become
a rock guitarist if it weren’t for the eardrum busting decibels
that characterize the genre. But having been there, his musical
palette is more colourful than most, and from time to time, when
the music announces the need, Provost doesn’t flinch from
cranking up the amp and supplying some electric glide in blue.
In an
uncompromising, genre-bending version of John Coltrane’s
“Central Park West,” Provost, perhaps under the benign
influence of Jim Hall, infuses the expansive preamble with an
airy filigree of notes and downy textures, only (à la Allan
Holdsworth) to morph into the electric-fusion mode with such ease
and inevitability that he makes the case that the song had to
wait 50 years for its ideal rendering. Precedent setting interpretations
such as this leave no doubt that jazz’s verve and vitality
are best served and preserved by those madly inspired leaps that
look beyond the score for the music’s true measure of greatness.
Throughout
Désirs Démodés’s ten tracks,
all of which but two are originals, Provost’s versatility
guarantees any number of highly engaging twists and turns. And
before you’ve finished your first listening, it will have
snuck up on you that the guitarist, who would rather understate
than force any issue, is an exceptionally creative soloist. That
Provost will always remain an acquired taste speaks to the subtlety
and intricacy of his finger work and invention, and commitment
to being himself and staying within himself in whatever music
he’s performing.
Almost
all guitarists, in the narration of their solos, achieve their
resolution or climax as a function of the notes in ascent; climbing
the neck of the guitar as far as it physically allows. Far too
often, the musician who would rather show what he can do than
share what he has to say will fall back on a predetermined interval
(the arpeggio) in order to deliver himself to the appropriate
high point on the neck of his instrument. He learns to skillfully
hide behind visually arresting technique, and like the thespian
or screen actor, incorporates memorized gestures into his performance
that allow him to ape emotions he is unable to summon from within.
If the musician performs well enough, the concert goer will not
suspect he has exchanged an evening of music for theatre.
Since
we are always looking for reasons to separate the merely competent
guitarist from the very best, what singularly stands out in Sylvain
Provost’s soloing is that rare ability to achieve resolution
(ecstasy) playing in descent. His gripping, probing electric solo
in "Égérie" is not only a CD, but genre
highlight because he’s able to lay down and seamlessly synchronize
an extended series of emotional peaks despite the descending interval
of notes -- an accomplishment which speaks to his understanding
of the emotive underpinnings of music. In all of jazz and pop/rock
there are only a handful of examples in which climax and ecstasy
are achieved via descending notes. Steely Dan did it in some of
their compositions, and Frank Zappa, in especially his soloing.
Both deliberately begin high in order to effectively, meaningfully
descend, to the effect that they have entered a new idiom into
the ever expanding musical cosmos. Like the baker who has discovered
how to get a rise out of bread without yeast, the musician who
has something meaningful to say will find a way to say it regardless
of restrictions imposed by convention or chart.
Just
when you’ve decided you’ve had enough of that too-oft
played warhorse, “Summertime,” for the rest of your
life (and the next), Provost bears down on it and emerges from
below the surface of an easy summer day with a rendering that
unfolds like the anxious passing of time, whose fugitive aspects
are marvelously transmuted into haunting sequences of fragile,
fragmented chords and tentative single note rejoinders. The notably
arresting introduction that refuses to play by the rules reveals
a composer who is not afraid to reject his own false starts, who
is his own harshest critic, who makes the case that The Standards
are such by virtue of their inexhaustibility.
“Février”
is perhaps the most noteworthy track in the collection. Closer
to classical than jazz, it’s a highly personal statement
that attempts to reconcile the composer’s calling with his
outside-looking-in view of the world. As an evocative mood piece
that uses broken chords and lateral slippage (unconventional modulations)
to advance its ideas, it takes the listener on a weighty but hopeful
journey that is subject to constant variation and movement. Not
even three minutes long, the music celebrates and rewards the
creative process and the long hours dedicated to its perfection.
What causes an exceptional work like “Février”
to erupt into being is the composer’s unceasing quest for
equilibrium that only he can provide, which becomes his signature
and sanctuary -- the place the listener goes because he knows
who is there and what awaits.
Désirs
Démodés should not only be a cinch for a Juno
nomination, but is a credible candidate for Grammy Jazz Album
Of The Year. It’s a CD that grows on the listener through
the power of its finely wrought melodies and discreet originality.
With
summer just around the corner, Sylvain Provost will once again
be performing at the Montreal Jazz Festival (its 30th edition),
in the 3-day long Guitarissimo
concert series, along with headliners Stanley Jordan and Russell
Malone. You’ll also find him in Montreal's
Palais des Congrès’s convention salons where luthiers
from around the world gather to show their stuff, asking only
the best, such as Provost, to bring out what is best in their
precious-perfect instruments.
Listen
to Sylvain Provost perform "Égérie."
Photo
© Marcel Dubois
