Jean-Christophe Renault - Under Troubled Waters (2023) Hi-Res

Jean-Christophe Renault’s 1-2-1 with his faithful companion continues, exploring the medium and sub ranges of the keyboard.

If his previous album, ‘Ears Have No Eyelids’, was a tribute to numerous mentors, this one is more of a posthumous homage to his grandmother who was also a pianist. She held his very young hand in hers, and made him listen to ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ by Modest Mussorgsky’s… It is at that moment he realized that notes are capable of expressing so many feelings, to evoke so many pictures in one’s mind. When the war started in Ukraine, he reopened this score sheets and played ‘The Great Gate of Kiev’ or the sublime ‘Il vecchio Castello’… Then he started to compose ‘Pictures of an invasion’… and desired to record again!

All that remained was to set the scene and choose the companions who would stimulate the elaboration of a “cask strenght” album, bouncing between tributes and commemorations, waltz and blues, sadness and light drunkness…

“The location – a small piece of heaven by a river – and a fistful of friends, listening from the tip of their chairs, have made this moment magical and vital in my everlasting search for lost sound!

Under Troubled Water is my 7th Solo Piano album, and probably the most minimalist.

The Taoist philosopher Tchouang-Tseu once said: the best gift you can make to speech is to be silent, to which I would add: the best gift you can make to music is to fill it with silences… ”