jazz&people, the leading French crowdfunded jazz label, is proud to present "Escaping the Dark Side", the first album by French-American jazz saxophonist PLUME, featuring Ambrose Akinmusire as special guest.

After Boston and New York, the saxophonist known as "PLUME" has arrived on the French scene with astonishing energy and an alto sound that is sweeping everyone off their feet. This atypical and distinctive “bird” has made an intense and spiritual album that brings the mystique back to the very heart of jazz. With special guest Ambrose Akinmusire. Warning: revelation!

When was the last time you heard something like this? When was the last time hearing an alto saxophone felt like a punch in the gut? If PLUME (“feather” in French) seems to come out of nowhere, there is no question about his talent. He makes a mark on everyone who hears him for the first time. Catches the attention of musicians who hadn’t heard of him. Impresses all those who share a stage with him. Captivates with a few notes those who hear him for the first time. In just a few months in Paris, this atypical saxophonist and his unusual nickname have become the talk of the town.

Where does he come from? PLUME didn’t try to seek fame before. Under this gentle and mysterious, birdlike and airy nickname, he was active in France and in the United States, living between New York and Paris, where he has now settled. A graduate of the Berklee College of Music and New England Conservatory in Boston, he rubbed shoulders there and later on stage at the fabled Wally’s Cafe with an entire generation of musicians: Christian Scott, Walter Smith III (author of the foreword of the album), Ambrose Akinmusire (featured on two tracks), Jason Palmer, Warren Wolf, Jaleel Shaw… All of whom speak highly of him and who are leading lights of jazz today. If all his former classmates have become key figures of contemporary jazz, PLUME has followed a more tortuous path, preferring the underground to glory, traveling back and forth across the Atlantic, and spending most of his time perfecting his musical craft, his technique and concepts.

PLUME is a shadowy presence in a city. His instrument slung over his shoulder, he is a samurai of the saxophone for whom the repetition of gestures is a kind of plenitude, for whom the articulation of a phrase must attain a kind of evidence, for whom the deployment of sound is a way of getting in touch with a spiritual resonance. PLUME chose jazz the way one enters into religion. Music is for him neither a pretext nor an artifice. It is a quest. An obsession. And it is perhaps a salvation.

PLUME reconnects with the fiercelessness of jazz that drives musicians to surpass themselves. His playing is inhabited by an unfeigned urgency. No demonstrations, no stylistic exercises. He plays like the person he is, with determination and concentration. Leading a close-knit quartet, he seeks the light; not in order to shine but in order to breathe.

PLUME brings the mystique back to the very heart of jazz.

L'ALBUM

1. Seek You Must 8’13

2. Escaping the Dark Side 7’39

3. Nature Boy 6’33

4. New Love 5’28

5. Falling Angels 6’37

6. Helen's Song 6’06

7. Holy Holy 2’21

8. Perseverance 6’17

Plume, alto saxophone

Leonardo Montana, piano

Géraud Portal, double bass

Antoine Paganotti, drums

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Special Guest : Ambrose Akinmusire, trumpet (tracks 5 & 8)

All compositions by Plume, except #3 (by Eden Ahbez, arranged by Plume) and #7 (traditional).

Recorded at Studio Sextan, Paris, by Vincent Mahey

Mixing and mastering by David Darlington, New York City (Herbie Hancock, Aaron Parks, Peter Tosh, Sting...)

Photos by Eric Garault. Graphic design by Olivier Linden.

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PLUME - Escaping the Dark Side