LETTER

Album review

French pianist Sofiane Pamart became seemingly omnipresent with the release of his 2019 solo debut album, Planet, where his skills as one of the most in-demand session pianists in his country's hip-hop scene were reconfigured into a sound that was highly melodic and pop-structured, but also imaginative and abstract. The virtuosic keyboardist's approach to composition means that his music lacks the rigor and artfulness of the canon, but it's also adventurous and insightful on its own terms. In other words, he is not Pollini playing Chopin, but, well, he's not John Tesh playing Red Rocks, either. His inviting sound resulted in tracks from Planet appearing on countless "chill piano" playlists, where they consistently stood out. And now, with Letter, Pamart is poised to continue his dominance in this area, with a collection of 18 brief numbers (only one cracks the four-minute mark; a dozen are under three) that while optimized for maximum streaming appeal are also clearly designed to be listened to as an album, a pandemic love letter, as it were. While Pamart puts the compositional theme in ALL CAPS for you to see, there is a surprising amount of subtlety in some of these numbers. Though highly skilled Parmart is decidedly an unflashy player, so when he occasionally flexes—as he does on a cut like "SAVED"—it's deployed to great effect. Most often, he's in a sort of melody-forward, sing-songy mode that some may call cinematic due to its unapologetic grandiosity, but is actually just intensely melodramatic. This is most apparent on a track like album-closer "ASIA" or the ironically titled "SOLITUDE," and by leaning so heavily on simple repetitions and near-cloying melodies, Pamart runs the risk of unbalancing his unique blend of classical culture and pop culture. © Jason Ferguson/Qobuz