François Couturier
Nostalghia - Song for Tarkovsky

François Couturier: piano
Anja Lechner: violoncello
Jean-Marc Larché: soprano saxophone
Jean-Louis Matinier: accordion

US Release date: October 10, 2006

A special recording from a new group led by François Couturier. Nostalghia -
Song for Tarkovsky is the first 'leader' album issued under Couturier's name in
many years. Apart from a handful of duo recordings, his energies have long been
invested in the musical concepts of others. A generous, thoughtful, lyrical
player, he has worked particularly closely with Tunisian oud master Anouar
Brahem in the last decade, joining Brahem's trio on Le pas du chat noir
(recorded 2001) and appearing on its sequel, Le voyage de sahar (2005).
Couturier and accordionist Jean-Louis Matinier (also heard on Nostalghia) have
had an important role to play in Brahem's new musical directions.

In the course of the Brahem sessions, Couturier and producer Manfred Eicher
discussed possible projects. The pianist being a musician of wide-ranging
artistic interests, it was decided to present a recording that would reach
beyond the scope of 'jazz', and offer an hommage to a director whose work
transcended 'film'.

Nostalghia is not the first ECM album dedicated to the memory of Andrei
Tarkovsky, that distinction belonging to Arvo Pärt's Arbos (Jan Garbarek's All
Those Born With Wings also contains a dedication), but it is the first to
address Tarkovsky's inspirational world, and the 'spiritual' aura of the great
Russian filmmaker's work.

Couturier explains in his brief liner note that Tarkovsky is his favorite
director. "Andrei Rublev was a revelation for me. Since then I have seen all his
films over and over again... They are long poems, hypnotic in their slowness,
and pervaded with spirituality (...) I did not seek to make 'scenic' music of
any kind." - This is not 'soundtrack' music, and Couturier goes out of his way
to avoid the illustrative. "I have tried, instead, to represent in each piece a
specific emotion linked to the universe of this director - to his films, of
course, but also to some of his favorite actors - or composers. Or even to the
very original way he plays with shades of color. This recording is our way of
paying tribute to this great artist."

Song for Tarkovsky is a project that fits very naturally in ECM's soundworld.
The label has long explored links between the arts, has often considered music
'cinematically', and has provided a context for soundtracks of Godard and
Angelopoulos. Tarkovsky's description of filmmaking, moreover, as "Sculpting in
Time" could quite easily be applied to the label's production philosophy.

A word about the album title: for Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-1986), Nostalghia
signified more than "nostalgia" in the sentimental English sense, and more, too,
than the limited Russian meaning of "longing for one's homeland". The term as
applied in his film Nostalghia (1983) was intended, he said, to indicate a
"global yearning for the wholeness of existence". (In a 1995 interview, director
Theo Angelopoulos recalled, "Once in Rome, I was staying in the same apartment
building with Andrei Tarkovsky. He was shooting Nostalghia at the time. And we
talked about 'nostalgia' the concept and feeling, and he tried to tell me it was
a Russian word, but of course I explained it was Greek: nostos, meaning
homecoming. So we argued about it. Finally he said 'Excuse me, nostalgia is so
deeply a part of the Russian soul and spirit, that I feel it is we who developed
it!' So it is with the Greeks!")

With the exception of the group improvisations "Solaris" and "Solaris II" and
the duet improvisation "Ivan", the music on this Song for Tarkovsky is composed
by Couturier but maintains a sense of openness throughout. "Le Sacrifice" and
"L'éternel retour" draw inspiration from Bach's St Matthew Passion and
Pergolesi's Stabat Mater (Tarkovsky greatly admired both composers, and used the
aria "Erbarme dich" from the St Matthew Passion at the beginning of his film The
Sacrifice), while title track Nostalghia and "Andrei" quote a theme from the
third movement of Alfred Schnittke's 1978 Sonata for Violoncello and Piano.

Individual tracks are variously dedicated to: composer Edouard Artemyev who
worked closely with Tarkovsky on the soundtracks of Solaris and Stalker; the
great cameraman Sven Nykvist (who filmed Sacrifice and is closely associated
with Ingmar Bergman); screenwriter Tonino Guerra (who worked on Nostalghia and
most of Angelopoulos' films); and actors Erland Josephson (who appeared in
Nostalghia and Sacrifice and dozens of other critically-lauded films, from
Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage to Angelopoulos' Ulysses' Gaze and, indeed,
Eicher's own Holozän film) and Anatoli Solonitsyne (who was discovered by
Tarkovsky, and played the lead in Andrei Rublev).

The group heard here is comprised of three French musicians - Couturier, Larché,
Matinier - who have worked together frequently in shared projects, plus German
cellist Anja Lechner. A member of the Rosamunde Quartet whose ECM recordings
include performances of compositions by Mansurian, Silvestrov, Shostakovich,
Webern, Haydn and more, Lechner is also versed in improvisation in different
traditions, working with musicians from Dino Saluzzi to Misha Alperin. In 2004,
with Vassilis Tsabropoulos, she recorded music of Gurdjieff (Chants, Hymns and
Dances), a project with historic-philosophical links to the present disc:
Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev was Gurdjieff-inspired.

François Couturier was born in Fleury-les-Aubrais, near Orléans, in 1950, and
began playing piano at the age of six. After completing studies in classical
music and musicology in the early 1970s, he began improvising in earnest,
initially taking his cue from modernists Paul Bley, Chick Corea and Joachim
Kühn. By the end of the 1970s he was working regularly with drummer Jacques
Thollot, one of the key protagonists of the French 'free' movement. Inside
Thollot's group he befriended bassist Jean-Paul Celea. Couturier and Celea
played in duo, then developed their concept to include other musicians. Amongst
them: Daniel Humair, François Jeanneau, Dominique Pifarély. In 1980 Couturier
won France's coveted Prix Django Reinhardt which increased his international
profile. Shortly thereafter he joined John McLaughlin's group, touring and
recording with the English guitarist.

Couturier's late 80s group Passagio, again including Jean Paul Celea, recorded
two discs for Label Bleu. Couturier's first appearance on ECM was on Anouar
Brahem's Khomsa in 1994, a recording that also marked the ECM debut of Jean-Marc
Larché. Contact between Brahem and the pianist had been initiated in 1985 when
they worked together at the Festival of Carthage. The association was revived in
2001, and Couturier has toured widely with the oudist's trio that also includes
accordionist Jean-Louis Matinier. Meanwhile he continues to work in the most
diverse contexts, including recently a project with countertenor Dominique Visse
playing music "from Machaut to Berio".

The Song for Tarkovsky quartet made its international debut at the Bergamo
Festival in April 2006.

Autumn appearances include the ECM Festival in Dinant, Belgium, on September 30,
and a special release concert in Paris at the Salle de la Chapelle des Récollets
of the Maison de l'Architecture, on October 5.

December 2006 marks the 20th anniversary of Andrei Tarkovsky's death. The CD
booklet includes stills from his work, made exclusively available to ECM by the
Institut Tarkovski, Paris.

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