MoonJune Records is pleased to feature on the label
SRDJAN IVANOVIC, based in Paris, France from Bosnia & Herzegovina and honcho Leonardo Pavkovic: drummer, composer, arranger, educator
Everything is a source of pleasure in this album: the magic of the trumpet, the candour of the flute, the inventiveness of the drums and bass, the lyricism of the guitar. – Jean-Claude Vantroyen, Le Soir (Belgium)
Ivanović feels the breadth of jazz, and through the mix of musicians from different parts of the continent, he seems to want to send a message about how much this genre today represents a universal musical language, connecting kindred souls by feeling, emotion, inclination towards beauty, or towards discovering beauty– Voja Pantic, Politika (Serbia)
‘Sleeping Beauty’ is a romantic, reflective, sensual-associative-emotional album. Nowadays, we probably need such sounds, so it’s really worth going to this fairy-tale land if only to take a deep breath – Marcin Pulawski, Laboratorium MF (Poland)
Lyrical, devilishly nuanced, sewn with musical subtleties – Xavier Prévost, Les Dernières Nouvelles du Jazz (France)
| In the words of Srdjan Ivanovic: My life has consisted of many moves, changing countries, neighbourhoods and apartments, more often than I wanted to. I’ve come to realise that what has meant home for me is music, and in particular the music I hear in my head. This music is personal but if you wanted to categorize it I guess you would say that it’s rooted in the Balkans (as in the mix of strong cultures of the east and the west, not just as in ‘’party brass band music’’) and is expressed through Jazz, and Jazz for me means freedom and expression, that’s what I fell in love with, the freedom and expression that be-bop brought and that flourished into many different sounding music creations.
Blazin’ Quartet has transformed over time in many ways, as the 3 previous albums and this new one might tell you. After moving to Paris I wanted to reinvent the band, find musicians that would bring something new but yet stay true to the innovative, ad- venturous spirit of the music we previously made. The musicians were chosen to fit this music and the ideas I had but also the music was chosen to fit these great musicians. They are all masters of their instruments and very strong personalities and I wanted to give as much of that as possible, within my own musical vision. I also distilled my previous ideas about making an album and went for a photographic approach to music on tape – capturing a vibe, not looking for a perfect take. I was inspired by the idea of sleeping beauty, that only the awakened mind sees. To put it in another way – I never fully understood why a diamond is so much more valuable than the so many beautiful stones that you find on any beach. Anyway, with this album, I wanted to deliver music that I felt was right, without giving in to preconceptions of what a ‘’jazz’’ album should be and let the musicians on it shine in their best light. I was really happy that an unexpected trumpet solo by Andreas – later turned duo when I overdubbed the keyboards – was a track that I loved and kept. Or that an unplanned guitar solo, by Federico, would end up on the album. On the tunes with Magic Malik, Rue des Balkans and Guchi (another unplanned event at the recording session, a tune from Jalkan Bazz, one of our previous albums) we again went for the vibe and the journey. The title track, Sleeping Beauty is inspired by my wife Catherine. It’s not a typical decision to start an album with a ballad and to have a drum-trumpet free-jazz battle instead of a solo but I think that it actually makes sense. The birds in the intro and outro were recorded at our lockdown location, at dawn for the intro and at nightfall for the outro. I was lucky enough to spend the lockdown in the countryside, near Sancerre in France, and more than ever before spending three months in isolation and close contact with nature. Finally – in the last years I have been listening so much to Ennio Morricone that I had to do something about that. I’m a big fan of melody – which I think is the king of music – and Ennio Morricone was a king of melody! The Man With the Harmonica is a very well known tune of his and I think we managed to stay true to it, without changing much, and at the same time transform it into something almost unrecognisable. So, although the music didn’t really change, the vibe is not anymore the vibe of the duel between Charles Bronson and Henry Fonda in ‘’Once Upon a Time in the West’’ but instead it’s ‘’ours’’, I guess something more on the Mediterranean side. The other tune ‘’A l’aube du cinquième jour’ is a tune that just with the melody takes you on a journey, proving my earlier point about melody! Again, we didn’t change much but gave it our own rendition that I think makes it very personal. I met illustrator Severine Scaglia at the playground as a friend-parent and again, I thought that that’s a place as good as any to discover a great artist. I admired her collages for both their aesthetics and their message which illustrated so well her subjects. I think that this cover illustrates closely this music, a collage of very simple elements that through the illustrator’s vision awaken in the composition as a whole. Finally, this album is a realisation of my people who believed in it, Leonardo Pavkovic of MoonJune Records, and the team at Le Coolectif, as well as press agent Valerie Mauge, and booker Sabrina Ouyang, who are helping bring it to you. As much as we can do, we need people to help us bring forward what we do. When initially asked to talk about this new album, my first thought was to say that beauty ‘’sleeps’’ in everything but when I think again I would rather say that everything is beautiful but we are ‘’asleep’’ and don’t experience it. But, sometimes, somebody creates something that touches us, wakes us up, and for a moment we see everything shining in its true light. I hope this recording does that to you. |
