For the composer, band leader, bassist and teacher at the Faculty of Music of McGill University Rémi-Jean LeBlanc, this is a fourth album in the form of a tribute to his musical and professional loves. A pillar of the Quebec jazz scene, LeBlanc surrounded himself with his family to record this Hello imbued with the jazz fusion sound of Weather Report: Jérôme Beaulieu and Rafael Zaldivar on piano and shimmering synths, Erika Angell (Thus Owls) and Elizabeth Shepherd on vocals on some superb tracks, to name but a few. All soft and bright on Flame and Casa Perdida open, intimate on Song for Margaritasuperb ballad on which LeBlanc grants himself all the space desired and makes brilliant use of it, jazz-rock on Into the Sun and Childlike (for Roland). LeBlanc mixes styles, his musical direction drawing a line between the fusion sound of the 1970s and contemporary jazz, which elegantly ties everything together. At the heart of the album, the long Saturnalia even tastes like calypso. What to slow down the arrival of winter.
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