photo: Oliver Heisch / Moers Festival 2006
Marc Ducret guitar
Bruno Chevillon double bass
Eric Echampard drums
Marc Ducret trio: The New Book
“After eighteen years of existence, this band is still bringing the same enthusiasm and freshness on stage. A brand new repertoire, with quite different angles we hadn’t explored yet; and the same eagerness to share intense musical moments, with an even tighter team on double bass and drums…
…a new beginning!”
Marc Ducret, December 2014
The description “guitar trio” is much too bland for the band with which Marc Ducret comes to Moers . This formation is the guitar trio for miles around. Unbelievable grooves produce music which seems to know no boundaries, and which takes shape as a result of the intuitive communication of these three musicians. Ducret describes this Paris trio as his laboratory and his new beginning.
Moers Festival 2006
photo by Maarit Kytöharju / Marc Ducret at Reims Jazz Festival 2012
Marc Ducret trio at the Vortex, London on January 28th 2009
Vortex gig reviews by Chris Parker
On the face of it, ‘a synthesis of Derek Bailey and Jimi Hendrix’ sounds unlikely, even downright oxymoronic, yet when French guitarist Marc Ducret took the stage with his trio (bassist Bruno Chevillon, drummer Eric Echampard) and began his set with a series of abstract pluckings and scrabbling runs, and then settled into sculpting an extraordinary range of electronically produced guitar sounds into more coherent patterns, the program’s description made a great deal more sense.
Then when the rhythm section joined him in a series of breathtaking joint hurtles punctuated by passages of quiet musing or even the odd convoluted snatch of melody (triggered by a perfunctory silent signal from Ducret, instantly taken in by his hair-trigger-sensitive partners), it often seemed like the perfect shorthand description of a unique and wholly original approach to the guitar trio.
‘Sound sculpture’ is perhaps an overused tag, lazily applied to any music that is texturally varied, but in Ducret’s case, given his predeliction for moulding the myriad sounds his guitar produces by shaking them loose from it, or apparently coaxing them forth by slowly twisting it in his hands, it – like the Bailey/Hendrix label – seems entirely appropriate.
With the intense and powerfully propulsive Chevillon and the precise yet vigorously rumbustious Echampard fuelling the band blaze perfectly, and Ducret producing an astonishing (another overused adjective entirely applicable in this case) variety of guitar sounds, from eccentric blistering runs to swoons, chokes and little clusters of quietly noodled notes, this was an impressive trio performance – but you don’t have to take my word for it; it is to be broadcast in February on Jazz on 3.
Booking
International: Charles Gil / Vapaat äänet, Helsinki (Finland)
charles.gil(a)kolumbus.fi / +358 50 5716 516
France: Stéphane Mariot / Seven Songs, Paris (France)
stephane(a)sevensongs.fr / +33 6 63 53 46 45