CD1
1. The Song
2. Alifib
3. Just As You Are
4. Caroline
5. Kew Rhone
6. Shipbuilding
7. Line
8. Alliance
9. Vandalusia
10. Del Mondo
11. Te Recuerdo Amanda

Bonus CD
1. P L A
2. Gegenstand
3. Rangers In The Night
4. Just As You Are

Orchestre National de Jazz:

- Daniel Yvinec / artistic direction
- Vincent Artaud / arrangements
- Eve Risser / piano, prepared piano, flutes, sound objects
- Vincent Lafont / keyboards and electronics
- Antonin-Tri Hoang / alto saxophone, clarinets, piano
- Matthieu Metzger / saxophones, systalk-box, electronic treatments
- Joce Mienniel / flutes, electronics
- Remi Dumoulin / saxophones, clarinets
- Guillaume Poncelet / trumpet, piano, synthesizers, electronics
- Pierre Perchaud / guitar, banjo
- Sylvain Daniel / electric bass, French horn, electronic effects
- Yoann Serra / drums
+
- Robert Wyatt / vocals (CD1: 1, 5, 9, 11; CD2: 2, 3)
- Rokia Traoré / vocals (CD1: 2; CD2: 1)
- Yael Naïm / vocals (CD1: 3,6; CD2: 4)
- Arno / vocals (3)
- Daniel Darc / vocals (4)
- Camille / vocals (8)
- Irene Jacob / vocals (10)

Hearing that France's National Jazz Orchestra has prepared a program of music by Robert Wyatt, the venerable sage of English rock and roll, is intriguing, but not necessarily shocking. After all, the legendary Soft Machine, for which Wyatt served as drummer and vocalist in the late 1960s and early 1970s, pushed prog rock far into the direction of jazz-inspired improvisation. But Around Robert Wyatt borrows almost nothing from the Soft Machine songbook and points instead toward Wyatt's solo career, dominated by political singer-songwriter fare. Wyatt's thin, angelic voice is featured on several tracks, and a raft of French (or Francophone) singers interpret the remainder.

It's a quirky bet by the orchestra's new director, Daniel Yvinec, and it's a rousing success. The record is first of all a gorgeous piece of exquisitely orchestrated pop music, a modern variant of the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds (Capitol, 1966); indeed, some of Wyatt's best work, with its multi-layered vocal sweetness, sounded like a distant cousin to the Californian group.

It's also remarkably hip. Yvinec's predecessor Franck Tortiller released an ONJ tribute to Led Zeppelin, the solid Close To Heaven (Le Chant du Monde, 2006); that was clever, but the Wyatt record seems to be really upping the ante. In comparison, the Zep disc sounds endearingly square. Now, pursuing hip runs the risk of sacrificing depth for flash. As if to stave off that danger, Yvinec includes a splendid and rigorous reading of the title track of the lovely long-lost prog-classical-jazz hybrid Kew. Rhone. (Virgin, 1977) by John Greaves, Peter Blegvad and Lisa Herman (a rumination on the exhumation of a mastodon that includes the following palindrome in its dense lyric: "Peel's foe, not a set animal, laminates a tone of sleep"). No record featuring such a track could be accused of being crassly fashionable.

Yvinec generally enhances rather than radically reconfigures the source material—the original "Just As You Are" also featured a French singer's heavily-accented English, for example. Wyatt's 1980s records often featured him exclusively on overdubbed vocals and synthesizers. Wyatt, who has been confined to a wheelchair since he fell from a third-story window at a party in 1973, recently remarked in a British music magazine that this reflected a sort of "paraplegic politics"—trying to demonstrate that he could do anything and everything. The orchestral fleshing-out (for example, Elvis Costello's bitter "Shipbuilding," or "Del Mondo," intoned by actress Irene Jacob) remains true to the originals' spirit but sounds appreciably more lush.

Nowhere is this more clear than on "Alliance," Wyatt's vituperative, venom-dripping screed against the British upper class from his Old Rottenhat (Rough Trade, 1985)—the lyrics obliquely refer the devastating UK coal miners' strike. Here, "Alliance" is sung by Camille, vocalist of the group Nouvelle Vague, known for their charmingly low-key, acoustic covers of 1980s new wave classics. For "Alliance," arranger Vincent Artaud finds some brief horn harmonies in Wyatt's chords; the result sounds like a Todd Sickafoose composition as scored by Guillermo Klein for his Filtros (Sunnyside, 2008). The song is ushered out by Vincent Lafont's exquisitely idiomatic Fender Rhodes solo.

Where's the jazz in all this? Well, laying bare for all the world to see the hidden connection between Klein and Sickafoose, with funky keyboards to boot, should be enough. If not, there are excellent solos throughout. And then there are the arrangements. There is plenty of praise to go around, but a special share should accrue to arranger Artaud. Victor Jara's tribute to his parents falling in love ("Te Recuerdo Amanda") is given a tender, minimal touch, while "Kew Rhone" is unabashedly orchestral; his treatment of "O Caroline," meanwhile, might have been a Gil Evans chart for Claude Thornhill.

Pretty, witty, accomplished and fun; a fitting tribute to Wyatt, with not a whiff of the stodgy museum piece, and destined to be one of 2009's best releases. ---Jee Dayton-Johnson, allaboutjazz.com

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01. Beware The Black Dog
02. Black Dog
03. The Rain Song
04. Dazed And Confused
05. Black Mountain Side
06. Chill Out, Honey Drip
07. Four Sticks
08. Close To Heaven - part l
09. Close To Heaven - part ll
10. Stairway To Heaven
11. Before Kashmir
12. Kashmir
13. Mody And Moby
14. No Quarter

Franck Tortiller - Vibraphone, Arrangements, Director
Vincent Limouzin - Vibraphone, Marimba
Xavier Garcia - Keyboards
Eric Seva - Saxophones
Michel Marre - Tuba, Bugle
Yves Torchinsky - Contrabass
Jean-Lous Pommier - Trombone
Jean Gobinet - Trumpet, Bugle
Patrice Heral - Percussion, Drums, Voices
David Pouradier Duteil - Drums, Percussion

Some readers might recall, fondly or otherwise, Dread Zeppelin, a band with at least one too many gimmicks: fronted by an Elvis impersonator, they performed reggae versions of Led Zeppelin songs (in place of the drum solo on "Moby Dick," the Elvis stand-in read aloud from the novel Moby Dick). One is tempted to approach a new album of big band renditions of Zeppelin material (by l'Orchestre National de Jazz, no less) in the same vein: as a novelty record.

Such an assessment would be grossly incorrect. Indeed, what this new recording by France's National Jazz Orchestra evokes most strongly is Gil Evans's orchestrations of Jimi Hendrix songs; there's the same big, brassy jazz chords over a rock and roll beat. The record doesn't necessarily evoke Zep itself. There is no guitar, no Robert Plant-like vocals (though Patrice Héral provides kind of bizarre but not unpleasant vocal accents here and there). The drumming is more likely to recall the taut funkiness of The Bad Plus than the lumbering behemoth that was Zep drummer John Bonham: "Black Dog" is positively spritely. (There are exceptions; some passages in "Dazed and Confused" are definitely Bonzo-like.)

In a recent interview with Jazz Magazine (France), ONJ leader and vibes-player Franck Tortiller claims to feel the most kinship with Zep bassist John Paul Jones, which is telling. Among the Zeppelin band members, Jones was the least visible but in many ways the most responsible for the overall sonic experience of Zep that attracts these jazz musicians.

And these are some very good musicians. Trombonist Jean-Louis Pommier in particular is a delightful and fluent player, gleefully navigating difficult lines on "Black Dog." Trumpeter Jean Gobinet recalls the bright, rhythmically sure-footed energy of Roy Hargrove. The composition of the band is a little unusual, with two vibraphonists and two drummers, plus Héral scatting and Xavier Garcia discreetly injecting samples, all in addition to a very tight brass section plus Eric Séva's Steve Coleman-like saxophones; this adds up to a quirky but crisp and amiable sound mix.

But, as is fitting on a big band record, Tortiller's arrangements are the big draw. Fittingly again, the loving detail rendered unto "Stairway to Heaven," that most totemic of Zep tunes, may be the most rewarding. Ten minutes of "Stairway" are preceded by two original preludes, one for vibraphones, the second for brass choir. The slow beginning of "Stairway" proper somehow manages to echo "'Round Midnight," with the remarkably supple tuba playing of Michel Marre taking a wonderful solo that could be mistaken (as indeed I did) for a trombone. The rocking dénouement so beloved by adolescent boys everywhere is crowned by the cerise on Tortiller's gâteau: a full brass-and-reeds transcription of Jimmy Page's iconic Telecaster solo. (A wink, perhaps, to George Russell's celebrated big band transcription of Miles Davis's solo on "So What"?)

Other tracks include fine readings of "Black Dog," "Dazed and Confused" and "Kashmir," as well as a handful of brief and lyrical originals based on Zep themes. Perhaps the most successful marriage of material and arrangement is the relatively obscure "Four Sticks" (if indeed any track on Zo-So can be described as "obscure"), Page's rock and roll guitar riff sublimely transformed into a very jazzy bass-and-vibes figure, without any real change in the rhythm.

In the end, I'm not sure I can shake the novelty angle surrounding the record: sometimes it sounds like these remarkably gifted musicians are bringing a lot to bear on music that, as compositions, cannot quite bear the strain. And yet, for me and, I suspect, a whole swath of jazz fans of my (rapidly advancing) age, these compositions are so much a part of the musical air we breathe that no justification of their treatment in a project like this is required.

Indeed, the intersection of big-band enthusiasts and present and former Led Zeppelin fans is probably respectable in size: add the additional constraint that they have to be aware of developments on the current jazz scene in France, however, and the field narrows considerably. Let us hope that those enthusiasts find their way to this music. ---Jeff Dayton-Johnson, allaboutjazz.com

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1 	Ostracism 	
2 	Sense That You Breathe 	
3 	Ear Against The Wall 	
4 	Intimacy 	
5 	A Sculpture Out Of Tune 	
6 	An Immoveable Feast 	
7 	Det Har Ingenting A Gjore 	
8 	Glossary 	
9 	Pleasures Unknown

OLIVIER BENOIT - composition, guitar
HANS PETTER BLAD - texts
MARIA LAURA BACCARINI - vocals
JEAN DOUSTEYSSIER - clarinets
ALEXANDRA GRIMAL - tenor saxophone
HUGUES MAYOT - alto saxophone
FABRICE MARTINEZ - trumpet, flugelhorn
FIDEL FOURNEYRON - trombone
THÉO CECCALDI - violin
SOPHIE AGNEL - piano
PAUL BROUSSEAU - Fender Rhodes, bass synthesizer
SYLVAIN DANIEL - electric bass
ÉRIC ECHAMPARD - drums, electronics

Olivier Benoit brings his EUROPA project to a close by setting a northerly course with his musicians that takes them to the capital of Norway. Oslo is an atypical city. Nestling in the heart of triumphant natural surroundings, it has constantly pursued its architectural and cultural transformation, somewhere in between ancient tradition and the incredibly modern. At the close of the last century, this city was already setting the tone for new artistic concepts. To accompany the capital of Norway in music and establish a subjective portrait of the city, first an immersion was necessary. Living to the rhythm of Oslo’s seasons constituted a vital source of inspiration that provided the composition with its starting point.

Exploring this fourth European capital gave Olivier Benoit the desire to associate words and speech with the project, hence the two-voice evocation that he imagined with the complicity of contemporary Oslo writer and poet Hans Petter Blad. This singular author, a writer who chisels into the chiaroscuro of souls, selected excerpts from his writings forming a series of realist poems in which the music composed by the ONJ’s artistic director finds its echo. To incarnate Hans Petter’s texts — which the author himself has translated from Norwegian into English — Olivier Benoit chose Maria Laura Baccarini, a multifaceted artist who is a singer and actress.

As an orchestral suite whose movements offer a very broad dynamic range — alternating moments of intimism and melancholy (the image of a hearing of confession), hypnotic atmospheres and powerful crescendos — EUROPA OSLO plunges us with rare intensity into the very heart of the city and the flesh of its inhabitants, moving between wounds, wanderings and renaissances. The panoramic universe of Olivier Benoit continues to draw from multiple sources — jazz, repetitive music and progressive rock — and they provide a made-to-measure setting for the elegiac pen of Hans Petter Blad. The outcome is a sensitive tribute to Oslo nourished by the expressive strengths of each of the orchestra’s musicians in the company of Maria Laura Baccarini, here an inhabited performer. An ultimate opus, magnetic and thrilling. ---onj.org

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