note noire 4tet

The Note Noire quartet combines the musical worlds of the Mediterranean and Central Europe in its repertoire. Music is the possible crossing point between these two spheres, which are so unwittingly connected by sonorous traditions that are conserved hidden in the precious skilled hands of gypsy musicians. But music is never pure conservation, and always finds its own way – just like water, or similarly to populations that are obliged to move around. It is not by chance that the Note Noire sound takes its inspiration from the sound of the ensembles of Django Reinhardt: a veritable carrier of European music in the direction of jazz during the period between the two World Wars, but – at the same time – the launcher of an enormous quantity of timbres and expressions that are typical of the tradition of the peoples of the ancient world.
Note Noire’s search for sonority starts from the strings of Markos Vamvakaris’s rebetiko bouzouki and extends to the gypsy violins of the orchestra of Sandor Lakatos, mixing folk Hungarian and Romanian themes with modern styles and jazz improvisation through both original composition and traditional melodies. However, the quartet inevitably opens up these heritages to solutions that are the daughters of its time. The presence of the Afro-Cuban violin of Ruben Chaviano Fabian further shuffles the cards at the quartet’s disposal, developing the musical discourse with a Latin accent, which leads to an extremely heterogeneous and colourful spectacle in which the rhythmics incites one to dance and the lines of improvisation provide inspiration.