Bojan Z & Julien Lourau

Double interview, solo albums

Paris 

07/10/2009 - 

Bojan Z and Julien Lourau originally hooked up at the famous Paris jazz club Le Sunset in the autumn of '89. The pair went on to forge a solid friendship and now, twenty years on, the jazz pianist and jazz saxophonist have just released a new solo album apiece. In a rare double interview, RFI Musique asked Bojan Z and Julien Lourau to comment on each other's work. 

Julien Lourau on Bojan Z

Back in 1989, there was already a buzz about Bojan on the Paris scene. I think I was drawn to him because there was something exotic about this guy from Yugoslavia who still expressed himself in English at that point. I was impressed by the way he played jazz standards with the greatest of ease. It was the jazz classics that brought us together, in fact. That's what we started playing together as well as contemporary compositions with the Marc Buronfosse quartet. The group went on to become the Bojan Z Quartet after Bojan won the Soloist Award at La Défense in 1990.

 One day during a break in rehearsal Bojan started playing traditional music from his homeland and I was struck by the way he related to it. We've become completely cut off from tradition in France. For Bojan, traditional music is part of everyday life, it's been desanctified, taken off its pedestal, and you're allowed to have fun with it. Bojan's approach to music is full of humour. Kitsch is something that brought us together - although it's something other people have always found hard to understand. I think you have to be able to ask yourself what percentage of kitsch you're prepared to put into your music? That's a fundamental question for the young generation today! 

For me, the turning-point of Bojan's career came with his 1999 album Koreni. That album's a bit messier than usual with Bojan moving away from the pure clean lines of his earlier albums, although he went back to making nice neat albums again afterwards… I feel he's gone a bit wild again on Humus, although this time round it's more of a controlled wildness. It's forceful and explosive but Bojan injects a spirit of fun - which brings us back to the subject of finding the right dose of kitsch!

I don't know whether we'll ever release a joint recording, but I do know that a working partnership between musicians is like being in a couple. You should never try to correct your partner's faults! I think if anything Bojan and I need to come closer together. You know what the trombonist Josh Roseman told me after our concert at La Salle Pleyel in May? "You're not in an ego struggle, it's all about solidarity and mutual support!" Performing on stage together that night with our respective groups and then as a duo was an affirmation of our friendship after all these years. I think we've both recorded albums we can be proud of and taken together those albums provide a broad scope of what it was possible to do in Paris between 1990 and 2010. Long may it last!

Bojan Z on Julien Lourau

When I met Julien the first thing I noticed about him was his energy. That's what sparked between us from the word go. Back in those days we were all hanging out with the same mates anyway… We belong to the same generation and we share the same interest in the history of jazz. The other thing we both had in common was that we both wanted to write our own music. Even though we come from different musical backgrounds and we've followed different career paths, we're united by the same spirit of non-conformity. We have the same ability to turn a critical eye on society and the rest of the world. From the moment I met Julien I realised I had a lot to learn from him. While I taught him about the customs and culture of the Balkans, he was a mine of information about France.

 Julien's an avid traveller. He's not afraid of meeting new people or opening himself up to new experiences and that's helped him progress enormously. Julien can be stubborn at times and he's certainly got a lot to say for himself, but he knows how to be subtle about things when he needs to be. When I look back over his career I can see an amazing evolution, but I also realise that his interests were already in place when he was 18. Julien's just developed them over the years. He hasn't recorded all that much under his own name, but the albums that he has done have all made perfect sense. Gambit, for instance, marked a real milestone in his career, a moment where he put across his own vision of jazz. But the album of his which touches me the most is The Rise because that album corresponds to a point in our lives where we clearly moved from a "before" to an "after."

Julien's new album (Quartet Saigon) marks a return to an acoustic quartet, working in creative collaboration with the pianist Laurent Coq. It's a luminous album which I feel reveals an unexpected side to Julien both in terms of the sound and the overall ideas. Our friendship is still very strong today. I still get a kick out of playing together as a duo and I think listening to our music you get a real sense of the time that's passed between us. There's a sense of us listening to one another and engaging in a dialogue and a constant exchange of ideas. Our goal has always been to surpass ourselves and surprise one other… And I think we still manage to achieve that a lot of the time!

Bojan Z Tetraband Humus (Universal Jazz) 2009
Julien Lourau Quartet Saigon (Naïve) 2009

Jacques  Denis

Translation : Julie  Street