Monteverdi, Buxtehude and Dowland meeting free improvisation and nyckelharpa. That is the constellation Clément Janinet has built with Garden of Silences – a Franco-Nordic-German quartet project that flows elegantly through centuries and styles without retreating into nostalgia.
Janinet, one of the most inventive French violinists of his generation, drew inspiration from Dave Douglas’s Charms of the Night Sky (1998) – but where Douglas leaned clearly toward jazz tradition, Garden of Silences moves with equal ease toward Baroque counterpoint, the oral traditions of folk music, and the legacy of minimalist composers such as Steve Reich and John Adams.
The quartet brings together three names well-regarded among European music connoisseurs. Norwegian trumpeter Arve Henriksen – whose trumpet often sounds more like a Japanese shakuhachi flute than a brass instrument. Accordionist Ambre Vuillermoz, soloist with the Ensemble Intercontemporain and the Budapest Festival Orchestra. And German double bassist Robert Lucaciu, Echo Jazz award winner and recipient of the Kathrin Lemke Scholarship.
French Jazz Magazine summed up their sound as: infinitely light and absolutely powerful at once. Dave Douglas, whose album inspired the project, simply called it “beautiful.”
LINEUP
Clément Janinet – violin, nyckelharpa
Arve Henriksen – trumpet, electronics
Ambre Vuillermoz – accordion
Robert Lucaciu – double bass
