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Hello everybody

During the whole month of January I participated to some kind of internet challenge: Jamuary. It's about recording and publishing, every day, an original thing. An improvisation, a composition, a cover, whatever you want, but recorded on that day. Originally, Jamuary gathers electronic musicians, who play with modular synths and other rhythm boxes. But I thought I could participate at the piano, and I was well received!

So I posted all this on YouTube, chatting with the other Jamuarists, and listening to their tracks. There was a little dedicated forum, with a « prompt » given each day, with a key and a tempo, to be followed or not. I followed them most of the time. It was an intense experience, very rich. I learned a lot, on several levels, artistic, piano technique, musical production technique...

Then, the question of the future of these recordings emerged. Several Jamuarists were talking about making a selection for an album on BandCamp. Bingo, that's what I decided to do too. True, everything is recorded with my digital piano, but I dare to believe that there is a certain artistic value in those pieces anyway. I kept 16 tracks, and I mixed them as I could.

I'm happy with the result. It goes in a lot of directions. There are some « traditional » piano drones, but also some Jazz standards, a little waltz, several explorations. I had trouble building up a solo piano repertoire, and this allowed me to take stock and overcome certain blockages.

What happens next? I don't know. Every time I've said things like « I'm going to do this » or « I hope to do that » and it hasn't gone as planned. So I'd rather not say anything.

So today I'm releasing on Bandcamp this little collection of these one-day compositions. 16 tracks, 30 minutes and some.

Ciao
Johann

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Press: A not-so-dry January
an article by Richard Williams, february 2023

(...) I've liked his playing since I first heard Plaistow, the Swiss-based group in which he played for 10 years, at the 2014 London Jazz Festival. Their albums, including Citadelle and Titan, put them among a clutch of piano trios – alongside the Necks, Triosk and even GoGo Penguin – who were stretching the format. Now Bourquenez is pursuing solo projects.
Participants in Jamuary are given daily prompts. These might take the form of a key or a tempo, and they can be followed or not. Bourquenez's pieces head in all sorts of directions, in a sense providing an exploded diagram of the elements that make up his own music.(...)