A Bout de Souffle

Music by Martial Solal

 

 

 

 

 

"If Breathless did not exist, no one would find this especially interesting music" - Martial Solal

 

Algerian-born from French parents, the composer Martial Solal had early musical orientation by his mother, an opera singer. Living in France in 1950, he obtained remarkable prominence in the jazz scene as a pianist, and participated in works of artistas as Django Reinhart, Don Byas and Lee Konitz.

The collection dedicated to his work for the cinema by Ecoutez le Cinema series is one of the most important releases of this collection. The sophisticated big band jazz (in Duke Ellington mood) worked by the composer is characteristic of his soundtracks. In a constant fluency and lightness Solal's music floats from thriller to romance. The soundtrack of A Bout De Souffle (Breathless, 1959) for jazz sextet, detaches in this collection not only by the importance of one of the greatest classics of the nouvelle vague, but for the option to a jazz as a great exercise in variations over the same theme: the romantic Theme D'Amour. In its antilinear progress, this theme turns into suspense in La Mort and Persuite, onto swing in Duo, onto elegance and tradition in Dixieland. The same jazzy upbeat spirit would extend to the music of L'Affaire D'une Nuit (1960). Other selections works in a more introspective music (piano, bass and drums) as the almost "suspicious music" of Le Process (The Trial, 1963), or the "big band crime" as in Les Ennemies (1961).