Nadia Labrie – Flûte Passion : Bolling Suite no 2 for flute and Jazz piano trio

If Claude Bolling’s first Suite for flute and jazz piano trio, as performed by Nadia Labrie and her companions, was a great success (read my review HERE), the second is just as good, if not better.

The same forces (Labrie on flute, of course, but also the excellent Jonathan Turgeon on piano, Dominic Girard on double bass and Bernard Riche on drums), with a little extra experience and mutual knowledge, take music-loving ears to a well-tempered crossroads between classical technical and tonal precision and jazz rhythmic and formal freedom. The romanticism of Amoureuse, without too many outpourings, the pretty, swaying fugue of Vagabonde, the pleasant, danceable atmosphere of Entr’amis, the nostalgic gentleness of Pastorale, etc., each movement is designed with great care and interpretative quality.

You can feel the musical communion between the artists, and above all Nadia Labrie’s passion for this music, which she admits she discovered late in life. The timbre is luminous and mellow, the technique excellent.

It’s an enormous pleasure to rediscover these little gems that were so strongly supported by Jean-Pierre Rampal in another era. The time had come for another reading, and this one, by Quebecer Nadia Labrie, is sure to leave its mark.