Some twenty years ago, when he discovered by chance the music of the ‘murderous composer’, the guitarist David Chevallier was fascinated by the complexity of the counterpoint and the harmonic framework, as rich as it is unpredictable, which coincided with his own formal experiments. He has accomplished a variation on the form of the madrigal and not on the works of Gesualdo, which for their part have been subjected to a complex and original prolongation.
Thus three creative agencies interact in this variation: the polyphony of the madrigals, the writing of David Chevallier, and the improvisations of the instrumentalists. Over these two strata of writing (Gesualdo and David Chevallier), the instrumentalists superimpose their improvisations, at once inherited from the different tendencies of jazz and contributing their own innovations. These three creative agencies, far from constituting a collage, develop as an extension of the notion of counterpoint, conceived as the superimposition not only of melodic lines but also of distinct aesthetics.
But David Chevallier listens to the music of Gesualdo not with irony but with wonder. The ‘variations’ do not partake of today’s prevailing postmodernism but are inscribed in the continuity of jazz, conceived not as a style, but as a process constantly nourishing itself on other aesthetics. This quest for alterity in jazz is convincing and successful only if it restores the link with the emancipatory urge that gave it birth.
