Review | Songlines

Lift

Rating: ★★★★

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Album and Artist Details

Artist/band:

Koki Nakano with Vincent Segal

Label:

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April/2017

Anything that involves the French cellist and world music adventurer Vincent Segal is always worth hearing. Here, he teams up with the 28-year-old classically trained Japanese pianist and composer Koki Nakano, now a neighbour of Segal in Paris. The nine pieces are all Nakano's compositions for piano and cello rather than collaborations, although one can be pretty certain that, in rehearsals for the recording, Segal brought his own vivid dialogue to their musical conversations. Each piece seems to have its own distinctive character. ‘Silhouette’ is constructed like a Bach fugue. ‘Petite Piece Pour un Inconnu’ owes more to Michael Nyman. The title-track was inspired by the ‘lift’ of a ballerina and the piano melody similarly seems to defy gravity, underpinned by the vibrating muscle of Segal's cello chords. ‘A Lady Just Quit Smoking’ has a jazzier syncopation, with a Dave Brubeck ‘Take Five’ vibe, as Segal plucks deep, resonant notes out of his instrument so that it sounds more like a double bass than a cello before taking up his bow again to create flurries of high, violin-like cadences. Lift probably draws too heavily on European conservatoire tradition to fit easily into the ‘world music’ pigeonhole. But it's still utterly enthralling.

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