NEW RELEASE – FRANCK AMSALLEM.

If you feel like you’re listening to music that is similar to that of personalities like Hank Jones or Benny Green, you know you’re in for a treat. Immaculate taste. Logical architecture of lines. Space between those lines. Franck Amsallem, past associate of Gerry Mulligan, Joe Chambers, Gary Peacock and Roy Hargrove, is part of a respected legacy and has added his own flavor to jazz piano for decades, in New York, nowadays back in Paris. He makes little stories full of crisp, clear sentences at relaxed tempos, making you feel as if you’re the co-driver in his convertible, plenty time to take in the beautiful surroundings.

Intriguing repertoire of standards and originals and his warm-blooded band sound are further examples of Amsallem’s good taste. Amsallem not only digs up warhorses like Blue Gardenia, vehicle for Dinah Washington and Nat King Cole, but also obscurities like Morning Star, a sparkling melody by Rodgers Grant first released by flutist Hubert Laws in 1972. Amsallem’s Agrigento turns up the heat with modal tinges.

His ballads are gorgeous tastes of his French heritage, notably Michel Legrand’s The Summer Knows, a bittersweet gem from someone who with a sudden jolt in the gut distinctly remembers that little trace of her lipstick on his cheek and her faint odor of lilies of the valley. An experienced man at work, on his eleventh album since 1992, who doesn’t need flash to get his message across.

Find The Summer Knows (un été 42) on Bandcamp below:

https://amsallem.bandcamp.com/album/the-summer-knows-un-t-42