Chassol plays Basquiat // Pisa Jazz 2023

Christophe Chassol – keys
Mathieu Edward – drums

Like Basquiat, but with different tools, Chassol cuts, pastes, samples, and brings together elements from ancestral and popular cultures. His musical colorization and reinterpretation of the world are in themselves a practice of plasticity. Terry Riley himself has praised him, and Chassol is in close contact with contemporary artists such as Xavier Veilhan, Sophie Calle, and Peter Klasen. He is sought after worldwide by producers in the pop universe like Frank Ocean or Solange Knowles. This sound demiurge, overflowing with enthusiasm, can boast of having invented a truly “unheard” music in an era where everything is mostly just reproduction and sterile repetition of the past.

For his latest original production, which debuted in April at the Philharmonie de Paris, Chassol drew inspiration from a lesser-known painting by Basquiat, “Action Comics,” whose original version belongs to one of his friends. Created in the early ’80s, it is inspired, as the name suggests, by the cover of the first Action Comics featuring Superman in the ’50s, depicting the superhero lifting a car. Inviting his 6-year-old son and his 9 and 12-year-old nephews to react to the painting, ask questions, and freely improvise, Chassol subsequently harmonized and “melodized” this material according to his intervention style, which has been at the core of his work for about fifteen years.

Accompanied as usual by his drummer Mathieu Edward and armed with his magically powerful keys, Christophe Chassol will perform on stage this unprecedented “ultrascore” immersed in a double-entry family film, connecting blood family and artistic family in the same joyful and multisensory momentum. In addition to this original creation, he will also perform excerpts from his previous works (X-Pianos, Indiamore, Big Sun…), which always exerts the same magnetic fascination on the audience, as with Jean-Michel Basquiat.