Where do you stand between playing the tuba with Les Troublamours and the harmonica in your duo with Benjamin Moussay?
The harmonica is a tumultuous and passionate story that began when I was a child. With long breaks along the way. I made and experimented with my own instrument when I was 20. I carried it everywhere, never taking it out of my pocket. It was during a long break from playing the harmonica that I spent fifteen years in a kind of brotherhood, traveling from Naples to Berlin with Les Troublamours. I was already a bassist, and I took up the tuba in just a few days. Taking on the role of the tuba, surrounded by the warmth of a group of brothers, in the shadow of their charisma, suited me far better than performing acrobatics in the spotlight on an imperfectly crafted, homemade instrument, requiring imposing technique for even the simplest note and producing a sound so faint it seemed ill-suited to the idea of a public performance. The tuba, on the other hand, immediately produced a rich sound, making people dance, delighting my companions, while offering me a few square meters of discreet laboratory on stage.
What is this so-called "augmented" harmonica?
That's its quirky name in the harmonica world. Personally, I've christened it the Abeun. It has 20 vibrating reeds on 8 cm of metal. But there are other, well-hidden notes. A meticulous drawing technique allows you to find 20 additional notes. This brings the total to 40, the equivalent of half a piano's range in just 8 cm. Since it's played almost entirely by inhaling, there's a tendency to absorb the music rather than project it. A practice of infinite delicacy serving a superfluous appearance.
The Sonny Rollins interpretations of Chopin that you've published on YouTube allow us to appreciate its richness!
With the exception of a song album with my old friend Francis Ferrié 25 years ago, I had never recorded with this instrument. So, during the pandemic, it was simply a desire to drop a few grains of sand into the YouTube ocean. Postcards from my musical journey, which, it must be said, resembles a Robinson Crusoe-esque adventure.
How did the meeting with Benjamin Moussay go?
He has family in the region. For the past 10 years, we've had a lot of fun playing together at private parties. I invited him to play a concert at the Piano Pic festival, and while he knew me as a bassist, we experimented with the harmonica-piano duo. It was a bit like a second encounter. He's energetic, insatiable. I'm slower. But there's a close circle of friends between us—Jazz MDA, the Traverse association—which, with the logistical support of Le Parvis, helped initiate the collaboration that led to the series of concerts last December.
What are your projects? I'm working on a large book that covers the second half of the 19th century. It's the diary of a musician in 1896, the year the Marine Band, the most famous blues harmonica, was released. This musician invented a harmonica like mine, but at a time when there was no technology to make the sound of this instrument heard beyond the circle of 2 or 3 people.