You’ve Changed. Naming his album thus, Baptiste Trotignon foretells both a personal and an artistic transformation. In the booklet of the album, the pianist even writes: “This album tells a story. The story of an evolution, an inner transformation, a kind of a chrysalis… After several albums where I wanted to emphasise percussion, not only the piano percussion but also the one from the groove masters with whom it was recorded, I wanted to return to my first love: the purity and authenticity of an acoustic sound, the raw sound in its obviousness.”
It’s not surprising therefore that You’ve Changed offers the listener an intimate hour where purity, silence, space and an emphasis on tone reign above all else. The saying 'less is more' certainly rings true here… Ten out of the sixteen tracks are played solo on the piano, a setup which Trotignon has not revisited on an album in fifteen years.
Extending from September 2017 to February 2019, the album was recorded, depending on the tracks, with Camélia Jordana and Thomas Pourquery on vocals, Ibrahim Maalouf and Avishai Cohen on trumpets, Joe Lovano on the tenor saxophone and Vincent Ségal on the cello. A select group of friends to stand by the master of ceremonies as he experiences some changes in his life but also to emphasise the special relationship he holds with music and the human voice.
Baptiste Trotignon, Camélia Jordana - I'm a Fool to Want You (Teaser)
BpTrotignonVEVOHis emotional state is one of a certain melancholy (even if the well-named Speed is an impressive three-minute-long car chase of a track). With few words, Baptiste Trotignon manages to say a lot on You've Changed.
His version of jazz, multifaceted in its programme - his compositions touch on Bach, Sixto Rodriguez, The Beatles, and standards like These Foolish Things and I’m a Fool to Want You - and in its references to the jazz of the former European greats, is certainly the work of a virtuoso who has no interest in smoke and mirrors but rather a continuous thread of comprehensive music.
An album so poignant that Trotignon himself writes, still in the same notes in the album cover, that this music represents “a rebirth, a direction to approach the second part of my life.”
