lynn cassiers - Yun (2020)

The Mandarin word “Yun” means “Cloud” and it describes quite well the purposes of this new project lead by the Belgian singer Lynn Cassiers: the exploration by an electro-acoustic ensemble of the traditional roots of that music we call jazz. Cassiers re-arranged eight standards of the American Songbook, giving different harmonic and rhythmic structures to the classic melodies of songs like “But Not for Me” and “I Love You” and providing new grounds to improvise with it. The “Yun” in question is made of the possible and improbable relationships between musical patrimony and invention, and this record is «an ode to anachronisms and other time-space related discrepancies». If, as Cassiers verifies, «our indentity today seems less and less defined by what is supposed to be our own heritage», the resulting re-creations are simultaneously a delight for any open ears and food for thought. A proof that, in this new century, tradition and contemporaneity can really «find a way to co-exist»…