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French popular and folk songs are known for their melodic and emotional directness. This collection of songs from guitarist Christian Brun's youth exemplifies that description. They come from some of France's best songwriters, including Charles Aznavour, Charles Trenet, Jacques Brel, Georges Moustaki, and Sacha Distel (Distel's "La Belle Vie" was a hit for Tony Bennett as "The Good Life"). The quartet allows the listener to savor the melodies of the tunes before moving into their own straight ahead Jazz variations on them, following a well-planned balance between arragnement and improvisation. The pieces serve as fitting vehicles for improvisation, offering a variety of moods, meters and tempos, and lend themselves to hard Bop and modal playing that would be judged excellent in any context. The leader gets a luscious guitar sound, spinning out long, swinging lines with rhytmic and harmonic surefootedness on the up tunes and approaching the slower songs with tasteful lyricism. His colleagues display a similar level of maturity. The combination of worthy material and stellar playing results in an especially appealong recording.
David Franklin.
