Susanne Abbuehl
April

THE REVIEW

Take a precise, airy, changing, expressive, tender voice. A voice that seems like a petal, so fragrant it is. A voice that not only sings but also whispers a poem softly at the edge of the lips.
Take an essential piano, the tone of a clarinet and very "cool" percussion. But above all, take the words of a great poet like ee cummings (strictly lowercase, as he signed his name). This album emerges.

A jazz sui generis, clear, crystalline, never banal. And oriental hints scented with magic. But the true magnetism of the album is the fusion between the texts of cummings and Susanne's essential musicality.

"Yes Is A Pleasant Country" is the first flower blooming in this musical "April." "Love is a deeper season than reason" and in this phrase, perhaps there is the whole sense from which the album moves. After cummings' words, Susanne herself becomes a poet. On an extraordinary version of Carla Bley's "Ida Lupino," a text is born, which is a masterpiece of sweetness, perhaps the best track on the CD. ..."Blue what you is I no, tigers in the snow"... Hermeticism, expressionist and dreamy voice.
The atmosphere becomes a bit more shadowy in "All I Need," a clarinet and the voice darkening like the light at sunset. But Susanne's voice is versatile, and she draws out notable oriental capabilities in "A.I.R. (All India Radio)." At this point, in a formula that is increasingly taking hold today, "Seven - Somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond" appears, one of cummings' most intense poems. Susanne does not sing but makes words even more fragrant such as "You open to me petal by petal as spring opens with its roses."
Then, if you have a girl with blue eyes, it's impossible not to dedicate the following "Skies Maybe Blue; Yes" to her... because, yes, the skies can also be blue, but they will never be as clear as the eyes of the beloved (and how can one argue when we are in love...).
"'Round Midnight" by Monk is reinvented in an original way, proving that the girl is not intimidated even by such great classics. At this point, cummings' poetry reappears in "Maggie and Milly and Molly and May." A track with an ineffable breath of melancholy, of disarming simplicity, where a starfish appears on a gray beach like "a hand with five open fingers." It concludes with "Mane Na," revealing again the mystical-oriental side of the Swiss-Dutch vocalist. Simply to be listened to. Multiple sensations like light in a prism. But all beautiful.