Mathieu Bec - Sunday Interview

1. What is your greatest joy in improvised music?
   
   The intensity of the exchanges in real time, like a deep and enriching dialogue, a conversation between friends where there is little need to speak to understand each other, the simplicity of the meetings, interactions nursed with benevolence.
   
   
2. What quality do you most admire in the musicians you perform with?
   
   Respect for listening to the silence which is a deep telepathy and a common inaudible tempo. This silence unites us in the present time.
   
   
3. Which historical musician/composer do you admire the most?
   
   Milford Graves, Bartók, Ligeti, John Coltrane... There are many and most of them are jazz or classical composers. If I had to pick just one it would be John Coltrane.
   
   
4. If you could resurrect a musician to perform with, who would it be?
   
   I have a lot of love for the African influence and wisdom of Milford Graves and the solar energy of Elvin Jones... Both have brought me a lot.
   
   
5. What would you still like to achieve musically in your life?
   
   Find a jazz trio or quartet which would be open to improvisation instead of reproducing standards played ten thousand times.
   
   
6. Are you interested in popular music and - if yes - what music/artist do you particularly like?
   
   No, I have to admit. A long time ago I played in punk bands and loved The Stooges, MC5 but those days are gone.
   
   
7. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
   
   I’d love to have the possibility to travel more with my music.
   
   
8. Which of your albums are you most proud of?
   
   Flyin Sufi with Boris Blanchet on sax and Standards combustion with Daunik Lazro and Benjamin Duboc.
   
   
9. Once an album of yours is released, do you still listen to it? And how often?
   
   I don’t listen to myself very much. The next project is always the one I’m looking forward to.
   
   
10. Which album(s) (from any musician) have you listened to the most in your life?
    
    Coltrane’s A Love Supreme and Lux aeterna by Ligeti.
    
    
11. What are you listening to at the moment?
    
    Miles Davis’ Nefertiti and Milford Graves’ Stories.
    
    
12. What artists outside music inspires you?
    
    David Lynch is a superior example, sometimes an inspiration as well as the disquieting strangeness of reality… I like “The Blair Witch project” film, psychological thrillers where everything is suggested and not shown. The dark paintings of Caravaggio, the chiaroscuro de Georges de La tour, J.M.W. Turner’ fire… And poets such as Rimbaud, Michel X Côté, Serge Pey.

Reviews with Mathieu Bec on the Free Jazz Blog:

• Daunik Lazro/Benjamin Duboc/Mathieu Bec - Standards Combustion (Dark Tree, 2023)
• Michel Doneda, Lê Quan Ninh - Thirty Ways to Avoid Talking (Relative Pitch, 2019) ****
• Mathieu Bec/Michel Doneda - A Peripheral Time (FMR Records, 2019) ****½

Also, Mathieu Bec will be performing in duet with Daunik Lazro at Domaine de Montbarri (France), on Sunday, June 23, for a tribute to John Coltrane and others.