Michel Godard & Le Miroir Du Temps - A Serpent's Dream (2014)

Nacido en Belfort (Francia) en 1960. Michel Godard se convierten rápidamente en un reconocido intérprete versátil que interpreta la tuba, el desarrollo de su carrera en el jazz y la música clásica. Actualmente, es uno de los más grandes virtuosos de Tuba y Serpent en el mundo del jazz y la música improvisada. En 1979, Godard comenzó a interpretar la Tuba y la Serpent instrumento, que obtuvo su nombre por su forma de Serpiente. La boquilla del instrumento es de marfil y suena con un tono cálido e intenso. Con su segundo instrumento, Michel Godard a ampliado aún más la gama de expresión musical en la música antigua y el jazz. Desde 2002, Michel Godard enseña la ciencia de la serpiente en el Conservatorio Nacional de Música de París.



An incredible instrument! Its name is based on the Latin "serpens" and means "serpent". It looks accordingly. Long, winding and bright green with a flickering head, six finger holes, a mouthpiece made of ivory and a resonating chamber in the case of Michel Godard's instrument. Its origins date back to the middle of the Renaissance. According to tradition, the serpent was invented by Canon Guillaume in Auxerre in 1590. In the mindset of the 16th century, the sound of the zink resembled the human voice in a special way.

Michel Godard brings together renowned musicians in his ensemble "Le miroir du temps", who want to break out of customary conventions exactly as he does. "Together they manage to raise awareness of the timeliness of old music age and resonate something of the variety of sound of earlier epochs in contemporary music at the same time," Bert Noglik wrote in the liner notes for "A Serpent’s Dream". Katharina Bäuml is one of the leading Baroque oboists today and also specializes in playing the medieval shawm with her own ensemble "Capella de la Torre", the tone quality of which combines with Michel Godard's serpent in a fascinating way. The theorbo player Bruno Helstroffer also has a lot of experience in historical performance practice, but also experiments with newer ways of playing, which he develops in different contexts. Lucas Niggli, one of the most versatile European drummers in jazz as well as improvised music, knows how to create rhythmically complex and sound-sensitive contexts. Michel Godard also uses the bass guitar; a harmonious extra totally in the spirit of flexibility of Renaissance musicians and the liberties that they took.

For Bert Noglik, it "is the joy of the flow of the melodies seeped in beauty and melancholy," which link the members of the ensemble. They deal with traditions and original compositions as with standards of the jazz: varying, embellishing them freely and improvising. A melody passed down through centuries can just as much be included as Charlie Haden's sentimentally touching composition "Our Spanish Love Song", for which Michel Godard additionally invited the young jazz trumpet player Airelle Besson to give it extra brilliance.

The recordings for "A Serpent's Dream" were made during the festival in Villefranche-de-Rouergue, where the ensemble performed in the Chapelle des Pénitents noirs built in the mid-17th century. The magic of the place seems to flow into the music, as so often is the case in the concerts and productions of Michel Godard. For "Miserere", Godard used an historic manuscript preserved in the Chapel, and he plays the imaginatively decorated original serpent preserved over the centuries of the Chapelle des Pénitents noirs on two tracks ("Old Black Snake Blues" and "Le sommeil").
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Michel Godard: serpent, electric bass
Katharina Bäuml: shawm
Brunno Hellstroffer: theorbo
Lucas Niggli: drums, percussion
Airelle Besson: trumpet (track 9)

1. Serpent's Dream
2. Days of Weeping Delights
3. In Splendoribus
4. Le Miroir Du Temps
5. Miserere
6. L'École de la Procrastination
7. Le Gardien des Reves
8. Old Black Snake Blues
9. Our Spanish Love Song
10. Les Portes du 7e Ciel
11. A la Folie
12. A Trace of Grace
13. Le Sommeil