[TR] [OF] Elisabeth Kontomanou - Amoureuse - 2014 (Vocal Jazz, French)

Elisabeth Kontomanou has since learned, by a strange twist of fate, that jazz was closer to her than she had believed, and was actually nothing other than her paternal language! Her unknown father fi nally turned out to be no other than a jazz musician, the Guinean saxophonist Jo Maka (1929 – 1981), who had toured with François Tusques, Eddy Louiss, Bobby Few, Alain Jean-Marie among others. Thanks to this discovery, Elisabeth Kontomanou was able to reconnect with a part of her past. She was also obliged to reconnect with the French language, instilled in her since birth, and with the country where she had experienced so much diffi culty in feeling at home – an independent woman rejecting social restrictions and moral rigidity. If a chorus is a kind of return, as Gerard Deleuze once said, then it is by means of French chanson that this return to her homeland was made possible, through songs which were buried in her own memory and which had to be expressed. In place of the repertoire standards which she has often performed in English in a style all her own, Elisabeth Kontomanou has substituted songs which, at a certain point in time, were on the lips of people throughout France. The melodies she heard as a small child, and which awakened her life-long love of song, were joined with words imbued with meaning to her. They belong to popular heritage and are frequently associated with an artist who was often also the writer – for example Charles Aznavour, Gilbert Bécaud, Fréhel and Jacques Brel. Like them, Elisabeth inhabits these songs with her own voice and personality, suggesting the emotional – even autobiographical – resonance they provoke in her. She is surrounded by her musician sons and a group of fi rst-class French instrumentalists which includes trumpeter Eric Le Lann and harmonica player Olivier Ker Ourio, both of whom have proven affi nities with this repertoire. Alongside classics of French chanson, she has added songs composed by her eldest son Gustav Carlström and a melody borrowed from her long-time collaborator Thomas Bramerie, to which she has added her own lyrics.

Of course, jazz is still part of the picture, lying in ambush waiting to sneak into the lull in a familiar couplet. From the soulful accents of Amoureuse to the whirlwind of Où sont tous mes amants?, immortalised by Fréhel and with echoes of Betty Smith; from the regrets of Charles Aznavour’s Sur ma vie, with a jazz ballad treatment, to the sorrowful lament of Milord with the bluesy harmonica tones of Ker Ourio; René Martinez (son of Sabu) providing the beat to Gilbert Bécaud’s Et maintenant and pianist Bruno Barbier’s homage to Claude Nougaro in Sur un air de Navajo; from Il est mort le soleil with the echo of Nicoletta and Ray Charles to the final Chantez! with its Brazilian colours via Brel’s vertiginous Valse à mille temps and the mysterious Anges de la nuit… This album is far more than just an exercise in style which jazz musician sometimes engage in, making French chanson swing. Elisabeth Kontomanou’s vocals make sense of these texts, the lyrics rediscover all their meaning, the words resonate with a personal dimension and seem to come straight from the heart. This language of the French chanson, with all its poetry, has fi nally become her own.