CHRISTIAN BRENNER
The Café Laurent jazz club in the famous Hotel d’Aubusson lies at the heart of Paris’ 6th arrondissement, at the junction of Rue Dauphine and Rue Christine. There, for four nights a week, the French pianist Christian Brenner (born 1958) leads a trio and regularly invites a wide-ranging variety of first-class guest vocalists and instrumentalists to contribute to what is undoubtedly the best jazz gig in the city of light.
Classically trained, and blessed with a wonderful touch and sense of dynamics, Brenner works with musicians who share his comprehensive knowledge and love of the jazz repertoire, and who, like him, have the enviable ability to bring fresh perspective to that repertoire. World-class improvisers such as Italian drummer Pier Paolo Pozzi and French bassist Gilles Naturel interact superbly with his alert pianism on such diverse classics as, for example, Body and Soul, All Blues and If I Were A Bell. And Brenner is also a fine composer. A subtle feeling for melody, time and atmosphere distinguishes the three CDs he has recorded to date: Influences Mineures, Le son de l’absence and the soon-to-be released Les Belles Heures – the last of which showcases Brenner’s many affinities with Brazilian music.
A musician of the utmost professionalism and world-ranging sensibility, Christian Brenner has given innumerable concerts in Europe and played at major festivals in countries as far afield as Brazil and China. If you get the chance to hear him live, don’t miss some of the best music being played anywhere. Certainly, I know that I speak for many in believing that, today, without the music of Christian Brenner and his trio, Paris would not be Paris!
Michael Tucker
contributor: Jazz Journal, London; author of Jan Garbarek: Deep Song (Eastnote/ Hull University Press 1998) and various sleeve-notes for albums by, e.g., Jan Garbarek, Christof May, Karl Seglem, Tommy Smith and Eberhard Weber