Emile Parisien Sextet | "Louise" feat. Theo Croker

Saxophonist Emile Parisien is one of the most important protagonists of jazz from France. A jazz visionary who has one foot in the past and one eye far ahead. This makes him the "best news of European jazz for a long time" (Le Monde), who should be given "undivided attention" (NDR).

Parisien's musical coordinates are broadly defined, leading from the folkloric tradition of his homeland through the compositional strategies of new music to the melodic and harmonic abstraction of free jazz. The special quality of this broad musical field lies in the naturalness with which it is explored. Nothing in Parisien's music seems calculated or forced. Instead, the genre characteristics flow into one another in his music in a completely unstrained, light-handed manner and without conceptual safeguarding.

Awards were not long in coming: Parisien was awarded the two most important jazz prizes in France, the "Prix Django Reinhard 2012" and the "Victoires du Jazz 2014", as Artist of the Year. In Germany, he received the ECHO Jazz 2015 in the category "Best International Ensemble", for the rousing duo with his musical alter ego and close friend, the accordionist Vincent Peirani.