I love what happened to music in the last two decades. The music industry tended to classify music under genre labels to ease the selling, so eclectic music didn’t fit very well under those conditions. It was the same situation with the radio stations. Luckily, after the internet boom, genres and labels lost their potency. In my opinion, the bulk of today’s music is eclectic and genres are much less important, so artists started working more freely and opened up to much more crossover possibilities. One of the pioneers of eclectic, fusion music (in a more general meaning of the word, not in the sense of seventies jazz-rock) is the French trumpeter, composer, and producer Erik Truffaz. Just like his idol, Miles Davis, Truffaz grasped the sound of “today” and added it to his masterful jazz skills, thus creating a unique modern jazz expression. He flirted with both pop and hip hop music, turned his group into a drum and bass grooving machine, and recently, collaborated with some fine pop vocalists. One of these collaborations is the song “Let Me Go” with Swedish singer Sophie Hunger. A wonderful hypnotic groove paves the way for Sophie’s allusive vocal interpretation and Erik’s lyrical, mesmerizing playing. Hunger has a clean voice, with almost no vibrato, while still being incredibly emotional. The quartet is impeccable as always, and it’s safe to say that Truffaz has one of the most cohesive combos ever.
The song is from his 2010 album “In Between” which he released through Blue Note/EMI. Besides Truffaz and Hunger, the rest of the team consists of Benoit Corboz playing Hammond, Fender Rhodes and piano, Marcello Giuliani on bass and double bass, and Marc Erbetta on drums.
Erik Truffaz is a French jazz trumpeter, infusing elements of hip hop, rock and roll and dance music into his compositions. He signed with the French EMI label in 1996. Truffaz gained international attention with his second album on Blue Note, The Dawn, produced together with Patrick Muller, Marcello Giuliani, and Mark Erbetta. Since then they have produced many Blue Note albums together. Sophie Hunger is a Swiss jazz-pop singer-songwriter, film composer, multi-instrumentalist (guitar, blues harp, piano) and bandleader, living currently in Berlin. She has released five studio and one live album to date.
