| The creativity of the artist is conditioned by the directions and indirections of his soul. Nicolas Simion's fifth album with Tutu Records is based on the description of such paths through the landscapes of the soul. Whoever lets himself in for the mythical world of this Odyssey with open ears, will feel musical archetypes and personal, individual experience flow together and light up as in a mirror. The famous, not to say notorious films within oneself begin to reel off, from brightly coloured to pastel shades, full of dramatic beauty, yet never neglecting the bizarre.
Simion's themes and improvisation in Balkan colouring, are however also mythical shapes, sculpting themselves into symbols, appealing to something characteristic and primeval within us, reaching deep into the unconscious layers of our existence, emerging slowly at various points, to penetrate the consciousness; not infrequently, this last
occurs in the aftermath, in retrospect, after having listened ... a very special sign of quality. Never forgetting that this is about pure jazz, about the melting together of diverse elements and their improvisational recurrence. This runs through the entire album like a leitmotif. Myths of the past reach out into the future.
In the process, Nicolas Simion takes recourse to the collective unconscious in a masterly fashion,spawning musical creations in the primordial waters of the human predicament. Those who assist him here have been his travelliung companions for quite a while now: Tomasz Stanko and Ed Schuller. Along with the creator of this album, both have a congenial knowledge of how to steer out of these archaic waters, towards a more discriminating musical perception - a quickening process; sudden meetings and experiences, though mostly old and familiar, are found here none-the-less in new robes, appearing in a completely different light.... |