The Parisian club on rue des Lombards offers every first Tuesday of the month, concerts without electricality, on stage as in the room.
by Francis Marmande
Tuesday, January 3: as slender, thin, that his career is joufflue, the pianist Pierre de Bethmann inaugurates the “Concerts à la Bougie” of the Sunside, which will be repeated every month. At the Sunside, a reference club on rue des Lombards (Paris, 1 er arrondissement). Outside, the brawl multitude evokes rather cruelly Baudelaire in his sonnet, meditation. “Inside” at the Sunside, the club that its director, Stéphane Portet, has, once a month, to energy sobriety: no electricity, exact acoustic, some candles to light up the places, and gourdes as glasses. Anyway: sobriety also has its limits …
No more choice than that of Pierre de Bethmann to run for such a bet. Elegance, silky touch, princely fingering, inner rhythm, the pianist imposes a discourse of rare delicacy without forcing anything. No showing off, not the slightest blackmail to virtuosity, Bethmann Stone Braid Personal and Standards like the poets their flowers of evil. Between two pieces, he speaks with a sort of gauge modesty. It is so rare. We are in the dark. Seven plugs for trail.
Curiously, listening, neither religious nor worried, simply sincere, deepens. It’s an experience. The club is full, no, it is inhabited. We discover the piano in majesty, lovers are kisses in the shadows where the headache rejuvenates. It is very funny and very risky too. Echos of his latest album, hot-cold ( improvised paradise ), beautiful escaped, amicable standard, the recital goes forward, a strange outfit. In the dark, we hear it distinctly, listening increases with the tense time. Invention of silence. Clear triumph after each room.
Respect for the keyboard
Presence of music, presence of jazz (which could play this thing, this garland, if not a pure jazz musician?), Bill Evans, Lennie Tristano, Michel Sardaby, Fred Hersch, The names dance in the shade, Without ever weighing, just there. We are thinking of the mythical journal, presence of cinema (1959-1967) alongside which the notebooks and positive appeared as applied fanzines. We simply think of the idea of presence, of respect for the keyboard, this swaying of rhythms, the glory of the stamp, and the dreamy piece, pianissimo, towards the end, which carries the silence. Duke Ellington played thus, or Paul Bley and even Mingus on the piano.
But no one like Pierre de Bethmann, tonight, in a club plunged into the mystery of joy between seven candles, to save the planet. Because, butterfly flight, spectacular blow or free gesture, it was that, right? No doubt naive, but truthful. Especially in the end, Love for Sale (from Cole Porter) that Pierre de Bethmann thwarts with harmonic intuitions worthy of the gods and black of Soulages. On candle.