Vincent Peirani: Reflecting on time and rhythm

With Living Being IV, French accordionist Vincent Peirani is writing a new chapter in his career. This time, he is joined by his old and good friends, with whom he once left Nice for the capital, Paris.

But stop there. Why Chapter IV of this volume? Chapter II, 'Night Walker', was published in 2018. What happened to Chapter III? It was fully planned when the pandemic put a stop to it. After that, the musicians didn't really feel like revisiting this project. Consequently, the chapter was skipped, which makes sense because Chapter IV is very different from the first two CDs. Everyone has evolved over the last seven years, and the foundation of this CD, "Time Reflections", is new ideas.

A band like a family

For Peirani, this band is like a family. Yoann Serra was his friend from kindergarten. Emile Parisien, a friend and collaborator of Peirani's on various projects for many years, has been a permanent member of the Nice Connection since their debut album in 2015.For their debut album, the quintet naturally incorporated stylistic elements from the musicians' backgrounds, including rock. When the second album was released, Peirani clearly defined his ambitions with Living Being to JAZZ'N'MORE: "We wanted to create a new kind of music that made even more use of the unique instrumentation to produce a form of chamber rock. It has always been important to me to arrange things very precisely, to give all the instruments an equal space, and to integrate the accordion even more deeply in order to create space for it to shape the melodic lines."

Sounds from four decades

While 2018 was already a great success, with rock references to Led Zeppelin, Living Being has gone a step further with the new album Time Reflections, in which the sound is even more prominent. All nine of the songs were written by Peirani, with one exception.'Time Reflections' is the centrepiece of the album. It is clearly inspired by the art rock of Genesis in the early 1970s. 'Clessidra', recorded immediately before it, also fits with the style and era of the 1970s.The 'Bremain Suite' is a medley in the form of a musical triptych that combines songs from three decades: 'I Want You' by the Beatles, 'Under Pressure' by Queen featuring David Bowie, and 'Glory Box' by Portishead. This means that the sixties, eighties and nineties are also represented in the ‘Time Reflections’.'Time' also refers to rhythm. A sophisticated interplay of rhythms runs through all the songs, which appear harmonious at first but are characterised by unexpected changes.

The significance of Peirani in contemporary jazz

I have been fascinated by the accordion in jazz for a long time, which may be because I played the instrument myself once. At that time, however, it hadn't really made its way into jazz yet. Around 1990, I happened to hear Richard Galliano, who was relatively unknown at the time, present his new album at the FNAC in Paris. I was struck by lightning, and in the 35 years since, the accordion has blossomed into one of the most creative and progressive instruments in jazz. Perhaps this is precisely because it was underrated for so long.Galliano was a great personality who represented classical music, jazz, musette and tango in equal measure. However, he did not abandon these genres in favour of fusion, but has continued to treat the various traditions with great respect to this day.Like Galliano, Peirani hails from the south of France and has a background in musette. He has also explored tango, but above all he grew up with rock, which is unmistakable in his music. Nevertheless, he has become a jazz musician par excellence who is on the verge of rethinking and changing jazz with his approach to accordion playing. On this new album, he and his bandmates realise a new sound that draws on various stylistic elements from recent decades — always authentic, never merely a pleasing fusion.Ruedi Ankli, Jazz'n'moreThis article appeared in the November/December 2025 issue of Jazz'n'more.

Vincent Peirani at Moods

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«Living Being IV – Time Reflections»
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