ARTICLE LONG FORMAT, Jean-David Ponci | «Ah, you love Mendelssohn». At a social gathering, this is probably the composer whose praises you shouldn't sing too loudly. His music is too accessible to attract the interest of your interlocutor. The snob tends to forget that ease is a quality compatible with grandeur and beauty. Mendelssohn was considered the finest composer of his time, at least in England. Here's a little overview to help us get rid of our prejudices and discover what's original and profound about him.

Brahms had a reputation as a misanthrope, and his music was often heavy and too academic. Brahms, a North German, had little love for France, and French composers never ceased to denigrate him. It was said that, thanks to his many trips to Italy, his sauerkraut was often sprinkled with ambrosia, the drink of the gods. It's true... Behind a certain heaviness, there are «divine» passages of intense beauty. That's why, if I had to take just one minute of music to a desert island, I'd take it from Brahms. Brahms is, in fact, a man deeply wounded by an unhappy childhood as a musician in a Hamburg harbor cabaret; but it is from this wound that the sublime music I would choose to keep arises. Perhaps this wound will also help us to understand him better, and to forgive him for his gaucheness.

The Christmas season has been over for a while now. But there's hardly a Christmas song that isn't still playing in our heads. The ones we hate in the stores or the ones we cherish under the tree. So why is our relationship with them so contradictory? And why does the music market continue to ride the «Christmas» wave? Perhaps and simply because, like every musical style, there are sub-categories. And in this case, there are two main ones: «melancholy» and «entertaining».

ARTICLE LONG FORMAT, Fanny Agostino | Long reluctant to answer journalists' questions, Nick Cave draws on conversations with his audience to rethink forty years of career in piano-vocal form. The Australian delivers a solitary, transparent recital. A magnificent confidence, with no escape and no cheating.

Chopin, exquisitely sensitive, a suffering, fragile, depressive musician... That's how we like to think of him. And yet, Robert Schumann described his music as «cannons buried under flowers». Chopin was in fact a political pianist, a symbol of free Poland. He was also a man of many connections, which is why he was friends with so many famous artists. He wasn't a stage animal like Liszt, but he knew how to be charming and funny. The expression "weapons among roses" also applies to his music: the pleasant, classical, almost rosewater melody is often accompanied by a daring harmony, unique to him, that makes his compositions brilliant.

LONG FORM INTERVIEW, Indra Crittin | If Claire Pommet, aka Pomme, is rightly described as a singer-songwriter, think of her more as a watercolorist. For her latest musical project, her pen - well, her paintbrush - was bathed in a sea of tears, an ocean of uncertainty. What she portrays is based on the transparency of her emotions - a palette of authentic colors. The artist from Lyon shares her lack of self-confidence, her fear of death, and her other experiences in a way that allows us to identify with her, while developing our own interpretation of her work. No wonder her work is minimalist: few layers of paint are needed for the light to reflect. The woman who was deeply influenced by Barbara, the lady in black, and who began to make a name for herself with YouTube covers, now takes us into her poetic world, at once dark and luminous. Her latest travel diary? A (final) reissue of her second album, «Les Failles», voted Album révélation at the 2020 Victoires de la musique awards. A far cry from her first album, which was A peu ce qu'elle voulait, this opus bears witness to her fully assumed artistic choices. Let's chat with this gifted young artist, who desacralizes taboos and writes magnificent love songs.

ARTICLE LONG FORMAT, Jean-David Ponci | Dans le sillage de Beethoven, nous avons abordé précédemment les trois géants du XIXe, Wagner, Liszt et Berlioz, que l’on pourrait aussi dénommer les bulldozers du romantisme. Progressistes et innovateurs à l’extrême, ils ne correspondent guère à l’idée de l’artiste romantique, méditatif et fragile. Il est temps de laisser place aux «introvertis» de l’époque qui ont été des géants d’une autre manière. Il a déjà été question de Schubert, il reste Chopin, Brahms et surtout Schumann. Encore aujourd’hui, il est difficile de savoir ce qu’il en était de la folie de Schumann et de son amour pour Clara. Face à une vie auréolée de mensonges par ses proches, il nous lègue une œuvre criante de vérité, des chefs-d’œuvre de sensibilité qui font de lui le plus passionné des romantiques, ou peut-être même le plus romantique des romantiques.

ENTRETIEN LONG FORMAT, Antoine Bernhard et Max Moeschler | Snarky Puppy est sans conteste l’un des plus grands groupes de musique contemporaine. Fondé au Texas en 2004, le groupe aux trois Grammy Awards explore un genre musical inédit, à la croisée du jazz, du funk, du R’n’B et de tant d’autres musiques. Dans le cadre de l’événement « Autumn of Music » organisé par le Montreux Jazz Festival, nous avons eu la chance de rencontrer les trois membres du groupe, présents pour l’occasion au Montreux Palace : Michael League (basse et direction), Bill Laurance (clavier) et Justin Stanton (trompette et clavier). Une discussion privilégiée dans un lieu magnifique ! Nous tentons ici d’en retranscrire le plus intéressant.

The bias is easy: contemporary music, therefore commercial music, therefore bad music. If this formula can be criticized for its simplicity, it would be dishonest to deny it any validity. And yet! It sometimes happens that natural selection operates correctly, offering excellent groups success and fame. Such is the case of Snarky Puppy, an American band that has already won a prestigious Grammy Award three times: last month, they released a remastered and remixed version of their album Tell Your Friends. Let's look back at some of the band's history.