A network for transatlantic exchange and jazz collaborations, The Bridge #2.2 brings together an outstanding quartet with decades of experience.
French guitarist Raymond Boni draws from an array of influences, from gypsy traditions to "noisy" rock, exploring expressive possibilities of the electric guitar. Double-bassist Paul Rogers was a principal figure in the London improvised music scene since the 1970s. Hailing from Japan, saxophonist and composer Mai Sugimoto, along with Rockford, Illinois native bassist Anton Hatwich, represent a new generation of Chicago-based progressive jazz
About The Bridge
Jazz–owing to its particular history–has always been an unmatched medium that allowed the sounds and music of different worlds to express themselves with passion and singularity, shaped by a musical art dedicated to collective invention and reinvention. Jazz was the original “world music,” long before this label became widespread.
In the recent years, after a century of stories and legends when every improviser, group, and scene grew ever more specific, many French and American musicians have expressed a renewed interest in experiencing the musical and sociomusical realities of their trans-atlantic counterparts. To really create mutual knowledge. But often with the regret that these adventures, swift to go “beyond expectations,” do not continue beyond a few concerts, a tour, or a recording, due to the lack of adequate structures.
The Bridge intends to form such a network for exchange, production, and diffusion, to build a transatlantic bridge that will be crossed on a regular basis by French and American musicians as part of collaborative projects. And, in addition to the scheduled projects, encourage meetings and relationships between creative musicians and perpetuate them. In other words: to give them the times and spaces to join and rejoin on both sides of the ocean and to deepen their exchanges.
