Although she has called on the sure touch of the distinguished director Jesse Harris (Madeleine Peyroux, Melody Gardot, Norah Jones), the 31-year-old Parisian Gabrielle Hartmann unveils like her predecessors a first album of 14 tracks devoid of superfluity, with beneficial virtues, thus dethroning Nina Simone and Ibrahim Maalouf in jazz sales throughout France last year. No small feat.
The sweetness of her voice, the quiet strength of her songs which make you dream in three languages, including Portuguese, the dizzying melancholy which inhabits her, the concern for careful arrangements, Gabi Hartmann has grasped and assimilated everything about this beneficial proposition without never solicit.
We smelled the essence of the five tracks from his EP Little Song Lines, whose felt recovery of Is Anything Wrong of Lhasa de Sela, as an exhortation to continue this journey with her, who likes to evoke several worlds: the fate of migrants and refugees, her memories of travels in Africa, her two years spent in Rio de Janeiro, her year of study in ethnomusicology in London, the guitarist and singer with a warm tone and assumed casualness likes to travel light despite an imposing baggage.
Hartmann’s music? Neither morna, nor fado, even less classic jazz à la Cécile McLorin-Salvant, let’s rather talk about intimate songs dressed comfortably with second-hand clothes. Remember the astonishing craze for the American Madeleine Peyroux 25 years ago: a timeless woman who sang in the New York subway. Hartmann draws from this same organic source. Thirst for Billie Holiday, thirst for Henri Salvador, but also for tunes that are impossible to resist, after all it is the same Jesse Harris who composed Don’t Know Why by Norah Jones (three Grammy awards in 2003).
The Parisian public saw her at the Duc des Lombards, where UZEB once played, however, her opening acts for Jamie Cullum and Melody Gardot concerts confirmed her rise. Would you like to know more? She will be at the Montreal International Jazz Festival on June 28. Warm recommendation.
Extract of Buzz Bee
Folk/Jazz
Gabi Hartmann
Sony Music