“Le Secret”, a recital between romantic melancholy and blues at the Agora de Boulazac

MSince their meeting, Arion Rampal and Pierre-François Blanchard have developed a common language that shakes up established codes. Lovers of classic melody, of Great Black Music, of French songs, collaborators of the giants Archie Shepp and Pierre Barouh, they constantly seek a poetic and sonic link which transcends styles, to bare the expressive heart of the songs in delicious drifts.

The “Secret” reveals affinities between romantic melancholy and blues, combining in an untimely and creative musical gesture, two modernities which fertilized the twentieth century.

They deploy an art of suspending time

The duo invents new standards, musical poems which are “deep mirrors” where the movements of the soul are reflected in liquid materials, blues or spicy fantasy. Responding to the writing of these pieces, playing like these with metamorphosis, they deploy an art of suspending time, which is also that of the great improvising performers in the history of jazz. Produced with the complicity of Alban Moraud, their album “Le Secret” is an impertinent and elegant stroll between Baudelairian spleen and the blues, with two respectful rebels as guides who no music can confine. Making a Fauré melody a jazz standard or a Schubert Lied a bridge to cross oceans and musical territories, adding a beat to bring Verlaine closer to New Orleans, it’s possible when you master it to perfection the codes of the different universes. Marion Rampal and Pierre-François Blanchard dare and assume responsibility.

Concert, Thursday November 21, from 8 p.m., at the Agora auditorium in Boulazac. All audiences. Prices: 22 euros full; 12 euros subscribers and reduced. A shuttle will be set up from Périgueux (stops: 7 p.m. ‘Tourny / 7:10 p.m. ‘ Joséphine-Baker center). Contact: 05 53 35 59 65.