It was bound to happen that the tireless traveler Renaud Garcia-Fons would return to his hometown, Paris, the cosmopolitan capital. To this crossroads city, a meeting point for artists from all nationalities, the Franco-Spanish double bassist dedicates his new album "La vie devant soi," named after the book by Ajar-Gary, which tells "the extraordinary bond between a little Arab orphan and a Jewish mother."

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For this project, Renaud Garcia-Fons surrounded himself with David Venitucci (accordion) and Stephan Caracci (vibraphone and percussion), two collaborators in innovation, with the central idea for him being to "create a kind of chamber music, play together, explore the nuances, the textures of sounds, starting from acoustics."

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Known for his mastery of flamenco, his escapades into India or the Orient, and his love for the Mediterranean basin, Renaud Garcia-Fons longed for something different, taking a journey back in time through a city of multiple facets, leaving geography aside to favor chronology, from the French school of the late 19th century to Parisian jazz. "It would be reductive to say I only play Mediterranean or oriental music. My background is not just about that. I listened to Satie and Debussy before listening to Munir Bashir..."

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The proof is in these eleven subtly Parisian scenes, in as many nods to Prévert, Doisneau, or Michel Simon, from the bustling "Montmartre en courant" to the nostalgic elegance of "Le long de la Seine." A journey between groove and poetry, brashness and nostalgia... an ode to humanity.

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Jean-Stephane Brosse