Django Reinhardt’s solo on Flèche d’Or

Authors

Keywords:

Django Reinhardt and Miles Davis, History of bebop and modal jazz, Jazz guitar solo,, Jazz in France

Abstract

Transcription and analysis of Django Reinhardt’s solo on his own composition, Flèche d’Or. The structural and harmonic aspects of this work, recorded in 1952, show great similarities with Milestones (1958) by Miles Davis, a well-known work generally accepted as the first example of the so called modal jazz. This article also presents a transcription of the accents and displaced rhythms performed by the drummer Pierre Lemarchand, in order to demonstrate a measure mistake that could be caused by the recent novelty of this kind of musical form in jazz. The analysis of the solo reveals an “outside” approach by Django as far as the harmony and rhythm are concerned.

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Author Biographies

Laurent Cugny , Université Paris-Sorbonne

Laurent Cugny, pianist, arranger and conductor, self-taught musician. He founded the Lumière big band in 1979 and began recording with this orchestra from 1981. In 1987 he plays and records with Gil Evans, and from 1994 to 1997 he conducts the National Jazz Orchestra. He also works as an arranger, notably for Abbey Lincoln, Lucky Peterson, Juliette Gréco, David Linx, Ricardo Tepperman. In 2006, he created at the Festival Jazz à Vienne, the jazz-opera La Tectonique des nuages which was re-presented the following year at the Théatre de la Ville in Paris, and recorded in 2009 by the label Signature (Radio France). That same year, he reformed the Enormous Band of twenty-three musicians that performed at the Vienne and Marciac Festivals, and at the Cité de la Musique. In 2001, he defended his doctoral thesis L'analyse de l'œuvre de jazz: spécificités théoriques et méthodologiques at the University Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV),and in 2004 he began coordinating research on jazz history and jazz theory. A professor at Paris-Sorbonne University since 2006, Cugny is the author of the books Las Vegas Tango: Une vie de Gil Evans (P.O.L., 1989, translated into Japanese in 1996), Électrique: Miles davis 1968-1975 (André Dimanche, 1993, reprint Tractatus &Co, 2009), Analyser le jazz (Outre Mesure, 2009). He coordinates and is the author of a collection on the history of jazz in France, sponsored by the National Research Agency and Sacem.

Fabiano Araújo, UFES

Fabiano Araújo, pianist and composer, is developing his doctoral thesis on contemporary jazz, since 2012, at the University Paris-Sorbonne (Paris-IV), with a CAPES scholarship, with the JCMP-OMF group (Jazz, chanson et musiques populaires - Observatoire Musical Français). He is Master of Music at the UFMG School of Music and Bachelor of Popular Music at the UNICAMP Arts Center. He is an Assistant Professor at the Arts Center of the Federal University of Espírito Santo (UFES), where he contributed to the creation of the Bachelor of Music course in Composition with emphasis in Musical Tracks. He has released 4 CDs: The Aleph(2007); Hermeto Pascoal's Calendário do Som - 9 dias(2009), recorded and published in Portugal, with the participation of Norwegian bassist Arild Andersen of drummer Alexandre Frazão (Brazil/Portugal) and saxophonist Guto Lucena (Brazil/Portugal); Rheomusi(2011) in trio with Arild Andersen and Naná Vasconcelos, and Baobab trio (2012), with pieces by Radamés Gnattali, Baden Powell besides improvised music in trio.

References

Referências de partitura

REINHARDT, Django; CUGNY, Laurent. Flèche d’or. partitura transcrita e editada por Laurent Cugny a partir da gravação do compositor no disco Django Reinhardt e sua orquestra (1952). “Le solo de Django Reinhardt dans Fléche d’Or” in: Les Cahiers du jazz, nouvelle série, nº3, 2006, p.213-218.

Referências de Gravações

DAVIS, Miles. Kind of blue. Columbia: CS 8163,1959. (LP)

_____. Milestones. Columbia: CL 1193, 1958. (LP)

REINHARDT, Django. Flèche d’Or. In: Intégrale Django Reinhart v.12 Troublant Boléro - 1950-1952. Frémeaux & Associés: FA 319 (CD2, faixa 12), 2004. (gravação original de 30 jan. 1952, Decca, Paris).

M C FARLAND, Gary; MULLIGAN, Gerry. Bridgehampton Strut. In: Mulligan ’63, The Concert Jazz Band, 1963.

CALDERAZZO, Joey; BRECKER, Michael. Midnight Voyage. In: Tales from the Hudson, Impulse Records, 1996

Additional Files

Published

2014-11-20

How to Cite

Cugny , Laurent, and Fabiano Araújo. 2014. “Django Reinhardt’s Solo on Flèche d’Or”. Per Musi, no. 30 (November):1-9. https://periodicos.ufmg.br/index.php/permusi/article/view/38498.

Issue

No. 30 (2014): General Topics

Section

Translations

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