Patrick Deltenre & Ivan Paduart - Ear We Are (2020) [Hi-Res]

Once the piano man behind Claude Nougaro, Toots Thielemans, Philip Catherine and Richard Galliano, Ivan Paduart is one of the most active jazzmen of his generation in Western Europe and has more than 28 albums to his name. In 2018, he hooked up with guitarist Patrick Deltenre (Maurane, Axelle Red, Viktor Laszlo) for a finely tuned duo.

After a first album as a duet (“Hand in Hand”, 2018) and more than 70 concerts across Europe, Ivan Paduart and Patrick Deltenre are back with “Ear we Are”, twelve original compositions that breathe lyricism, complicity and inventiveness.

They recorded a first album entitled “Hand in Hand” (Mons Record) with which they toured in Belgium and abroad. But their involvement goes back more than 30 years, it is notably on the album “Sensory Illusions” by Ivan Paduart, published in 1993, that they first recorded together.

This second album, “Ear we Are”, could have been called “Back To Roots”, as Ivan Paduart confirms: “First, because after many musical experiences in all possible formats, thirty years after our first meeting, it symbolizes a return to simplicity, to the most stripped down form of music; the meeting of two instruments spontaneously interacting with each other, without artifice or a safety net. Then because it marks a return to the first label for which we had recorded together in an acoustic format.”

By turns soloist and accompanist, the two alternate roles in a dialogue that shows great complicity. Twelve original titles, some composed together, that breathe lyricism, melody and harmony, highlighting their qualities as improvisers.