Album: New Impressions of Debussy

The radio is on. A piece for solo piano. Harmonies and themes full of images and very lyrical. An unknown recording by Bill Evans ? - No, the host announces a piece by Debussy: ”La fille aux cheveux de lin“. This moment inspired Florian Dohrmann and gave him the notion to adapt compositions of Debussy for a jazz quartet and to invent them anew. Debussy died in Paris on March 25,1918. He is considered to be one of the most important pioneers of modern music. At the 1889 world exhibition in Paris, Debussy hears the exotic sounds of the Asian region like the gamelan music of Indonesia. This encounter with foreign cultures and their ideal of wavering sounds will become characteristic of his way of composing. He develops his spherical sound patterns out of pentatonic, diatonic scales and by abolishing functional tunes. Contemporaries compare his style to the impressionist painters Claude Monet and Paul Gauguin. You can hardly imagine a musical language like Bill Evans’ without the impressionism of Debussy’s music that draws from the most diverse cultures. Recreating impressions of Debussy in a jazz connection seems to be a consistent development. The name of the project ”Blank Page - New Impressions of Debussy” stands for the way of operating in arranging the music. If you refrain from prejudice and thought control, the blank sheet is just the starter to create something new from Debussy’s motifs and tunes. Sometimes it is an obvious resemblance, sometimes it is so far away that you might only feel Debussy’s spirit a hundred years after his death.