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At 88 years old, Henri Salvador has been a popular figure in the French music world for quite a while (he started there in 1945). In 2000, he reinvigorated his career and reintroduced himself to the public with Chambre Avec Vue (re-released as Room with a View two years later) and since then has been going quite strong, coming out with Ma Chère et Tendre in 2003, and now Révérence in 2006. Recorded mostly in Brazil under the direction of Caetano Veloso's -- who makes an appearance here on a new version of "Dans Mon Île" -- longtime producer and arranger Jaques Morelenbaum, Salvador continues his legacy as singer of the sweet melancholy. The quiet, breathy strings and soft bossa nova rhythms that are incorporated into many of the pieces on the album add to the overall poignancy of Salvador's voice, which shows no sign of aging, still smooth and clean, reflecting the warmth of his native French Guyana. It works especially well on the francophone version of the classic Vinicius de Moraes/Antonio Carlos Jobim song "Eu Sei Que Voi Te Amar," retitled "Tu Sais Je Vais T'Aimer" here (it appears twice on Révérence actually, once as a solo track and once as a duet with Gilberto Gil), where the longing and suffering of love come through in the timbre of his voice, the hesitation in his phrasing. In "Italie (Un Tableau de Maître)," he riffs on a familiar Italian melody as he reminisces about the country, talking about it like a woman he loves, even slipping into its own language for a line or so, and in "Cherche la Rose," one of three older tracks on the album, and done with Caetano Veloso, there's a bittersweet hesitancy to the way he sings the song 40 years after its initial release that comes only from the experience and understanding he's gained as he's gotten older. This is where he's best, and most comfortable, and it's what sounds the best, too, so it makes sense that most of Révérence stays in the adagio, in the reflection. In fact, it even seems a little out of place when Salvador moves into faster, jazzier pieces like the gospel-inspired "Alléluia! Je l'Ai dans la Peau" or the Frank Sinatra-esque "L'Amour Se Trouve au Coin de la Rue," adding saxophones and bright drums and coming across slightly forced, albeit exuberant. Salvador has aged nicely, and settled down into his years, and the best bits of Révérence convey this perfectly, the life of an artist who has truly been inspired, and inspired countless others.© Marisa Brown /TiVo

The title of François Couturier's album, Un Jour Si Blanc, comes from a poem by Soviet filmmaker Andreï Tarkovsky, an artist with whom the pianist is fascinated and whose work was the inspiration for his entire 2006 album, Nostalghia: Song for Tarkovsky. The French pianist has devoted most of his career to jazz, but he obviously knows the classical repertoire well because in previous albums he has made musical references to composers as diverse as Pergolesi, Beethoven, Schoenberg, and Schnittke. That broad frame of reference gives his music an uncommon expressive scope, and the selections on this album offer an impressive stylistic and emotional range. It's possible to hear the influence of Messiaen in L'aube, Ligeti in the crystalline chromatic sections of the title track, and sultry hints of Piazzolla in Voyage d'hiver, but there is no sense of appropriation because the voice is always Couturier's own. His dazzlingly crisp technique gives him the freedom to explore and create pianistic figures that would be out of the reach of all but the most virtuosic players. In the more meditative pieces, he plays with a mesmerizing, unhurried serenity and flexibility; it almost feels like it's possible to hear him listening. Couturier can be heard quietly vocalizing in the more intense passages, but it's no distraction. The album should appeal to fans of both jazz and new classical music with a taste for the adventurous. ECM's sound is characteristically clean, clear, and immediate. © TiVo

The life of Nicolas Chédeville (1705-1782) covers exactly the golden age of the hurdy-gurdy and the musette, the French baroque bagpipe. His time witnessed an ‘art of living’ that revelled playfully in the idealization of nature as a mirror of ancient Arcady, and his works contributed to the soundscape of his time, one that portrayed this idyllic milieu in operatic dramas whose heroes were constantly questing for the past … In 1739 he published Les Saisons amusantes, concertos by Antonio Vivaldi arranged for bagpipes and hurdy-gurdies. These transcriptions of concertos from Il Cimento dell armonia e dell’inventione include arrangements for the hurdy-gurdy of three concertos from the Four Seasons ("Spring", "Autumn", and "Winter"). The same year Chédeville made further bucolic arrangements of another three Vivaldi concertos from the same set, calling them Les Plaisirs de l’été, La Moisson, and Les Plaisirs de la Saint-Martin (a version of Vivaldi’s Il Piacere). Tobie Miller, a star virtuoso of the hurdy-gurdy whose first recording for Ricercar ("La belle vielleuse") was heaped with critical praise, tackles this repertoire with infectious spontaneity. © Ricercar

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