Fredy Massamba & AKA MOON "Opus 111" recording

AKA MOON Opus 111
OUT664
Release date : April 2020

AKA MOON
Fabrizio Cassol : alto saxophone
Michel Hatzigeorgiou : Fender bass
Stéphane Galland : drums
with
Fredy Massamba : vocals
João Barradas : accordion & synth accordion
Fabian Fiorini : piano

Music : Fabrizio Cassol & Fredy Massamba
Lyrics : Fredy Massamba
Ludwig Laisné : movie editor


About this album :
Although its title refers directly to Beethoven’s Sonata No. 32, Op. 111, this album is, above all, a
crossing with multiple resonances, musical as well as ideological. It is not a matter of creating variations from this legendary work, which many claim encases the beginnings of jazz, but rather of travelling in an almost implicitly cinematographic play of memory.
This dreamlike epoch takes inspiration from She Talks to Beethoven, a short theatre piece by the
avant-garde African-American playwright Adrienne Kennedy. The story, in the form of a dream, unfolds primarily in Ghana in 1961 and concerns a female writer whose husband, also a renowned writer, disappears mysteriously. She then finds solace in Beethoven’s correspondence whilst listening to the news on the radio of her husband who is believed to have been murdered. This radio also becomes the echo of her inner world, against the background of street music in Accra. Beethoven appears progressively as a consoling phantom, preoccupied with the completion of his opera Fidelio. It is a sort of story within a story, featuring humanistic and post-colonial themes. As one reads, the evocation of the melancholy of absence as well as social and poetic engagement create an invisible bridge between Africa and the West through an African-American viewpoint. The myth of Beethoven’s possible Africanness, he who was called the ‘Black Spaniard’, also gently surfaces in a subtle, ambiguous game that lets appear, in its denouement, a drop of hope
for today’s world.
The music of this Opus 111 takes the form of a journey, borne from start to finish by the evocations of this dream. References to the famous last sonata, symbol of the break-up of an emblematic form and major event for composers of the time, appear and disappear as if haunted by a mind driven by the sole desire of reconciling.
In a collective play of counterpoint, the guest artists of the Aka Moon trio give flesh to this emotional
and lyrical architecture, turning it into an ode to consolation, beyond cultures, periods and social or
aesthetic points of view.
By the beauty of his singing, Freddy Massamba attests to his experience as an African, echoing
the prolific correspondence that Beethoven left us. Into his voice he puts the richness of his life as a
transcultural nomad in a flux of experienced and constantly renewed emotions.
Accordionist João Barradas plunges the music into a universe of very urban modernity, which he stimulates / activates with innovative visionary flights and playing that is always devoted entirely to the essential.
He signs a cadence that he named ‘Lichnowsky’ and which sums up in itself the shift between
tradition and modernity, symbolised by this sonata.
On his piano, Fabian Fiorini weaves, colours and sculpts sounds with a complicity that has become
more refined throughout his joint history with Aka Moon. He puts in reflection fragments
of the sonata like a memory coming back to the surface in the course of hallucinations. The itinerary
comes to a masterful conclusion with his kaleidoscopic variations on the solo piano
in homage to Meister Ludwig, as if that which has not yet been said must not be forgotten.

Stream//Download//Buy → https://lnk.to/AkaMoon_Opus111ID
Outhere Music
7 WHEELS
Management & Booking AUBERGINE → Maaike Wuyts