Sylvain Zimmer

Last sunday I played my very first bass gig with the jazz big band of Montigny les Metz !

The show went great even if few people heard me on the first song, maybe I was too close to my amp, I was getting good level :)

Anyway, my parents took very few pictures and the image is terrible but that’s only for me to look back in a few years, when I’ll be a great bassist :) Hopefully there’ll be more until I move to Grenoble next September !

We went with Vianney in Verviers, Belgium to attend my first Spock’s Beard gig. It was quite a challenge because we got stuck in the highway (damn Belgium !!!) and missed the first act which was Kino. Whom bass player is Pete Trewavas, from Marillion and… Transatlantic !! My favourite band musically speaking so far.

Anyway, I got his sig on the ticket and spoke to him at the end of the show, which was excellent ! Spock’s Beard did really rock, their new singer Nick is awesome, he’s really a great frontman ! It was really worth suffering 500km :)

They did all of my favourite songs except “Feel Euphoria” but the last one was “The Light” and seeing this masterpiece live left me really…. wordless :)

The new album of Spock’s Beard is out ! Time for a quick review…

The first listening left me quite disapointed. It’s very prog, so you can’t really say anything except “wow … too much” the first day :)

I’ve had to time to listen to it more extensively now, and all I can say is that I love it ! The style of previous one (the first with the new line-up without the giant Neal Morse) is definitely extended here. There’s no track I love as much as “The Bottom Line”, but “The ballet of the impact”, “NWC” and “Of the beauty of it all” are hits for sure !

Well, hits… I doubt they’ll be featured on national radio one day, but that’s not where prog lovers belong, right ?

I’m trying to convince a few friends and Adeline (my lovely girlfriend :) to come with me see them live in Beligum next month. The problem is that they use to listen only to the first few seconds of each track… They don’t know what they’d miss if they skipped “The bottom line” just because of the opening riff !!

Today I made the tracklist of the upcoming album of my former choir on jamendo. It’s a compilation of public domain songs we recorded over our 3 CDs. So we had to check all the dates of death of all the authors. It’s quite sad some of our best songs were harmonized by third-party authors, thus forbiding the Creative Commons license for them. The weirdest part is that when checking the biography of Gabriel Fauré, and seeing he died in 1924, we celebrated it ! That such a great man had died actually made us happy…

Imagine wishing the death of your favourite rock stars (mines currently being Incubus), to be able to remix their songs on your last 90-year album …. Let’s hope they’ll switch to Creative Commons before :(

My first official composition, an Ave Maria dedicated to my cousin Elisabeth who motivated me to learn piano, is also featured on this album. The recording doesn’t satisfy me at all though, because as it’s the last CD the choir recorded before splitting, it was _very_ rushed (2 sessions of 4 hours for 13+ tracks !), and the mix is horrible as it wasn’t released to the public. Maybe we’ll record it again to include it on my first album.

Anyway, here’s the tracklisting of the album, (don’t expect a release until next week though) :

1. Go down Moses (Negro Spiritual)
2. Soon and Very Soon (Negro Spiritual)
3. Go tell it on the mountain (Negro Spiritual)
4. Let us break bread (Negro Spiritual)
5. Ave Maria (Sylvain Zimmer)
6. Cantate Domino (Johann Cruger)
7. Cantique de Jean Racine (Gabriel Fauré)
8. Jubilemus Exultemus (François Couperin)
9. Nocturnes (W.A. Mozart)
10. Psaume 61 (Joseph Haydn)
11. Cantate Domino (Giuseppe Ottavio Pitoni)
12. Messe à 3 voix (Antonio Lotti)
13. O bone Jesu (Carl Gottlieb Reissiger)
14. Alma Redemptoris Mater (G.P. da Palestrina)
15. L’immensité du firmament (Benedetto Marcello)

Studying mathematics and physics all day long can be quite boring. So from the beginning I think I have to introduce the concept of Yet Another Boring Day (YABD). Basically, this means solving really nasty equations from 8am to 3pm, thinking about everything except this damned bilinear algebra thing !

Ok, I love mathematics. But I’m not so good at it currently, and we don’t study the kind of problems that interest me. I hope engineer school next year will be really interesting !!

So what did I think about today ? Hmmm, my first album. I’ve written down a tentative track list. I also have an idea of the title and of the artwork. It’s very tempting to post them here, but I know I’ve to keep them secret for a while, as I won’t have the time to record it until July (there are some exams before entering engineer school, you know ?). But it’s going to be exciting to record and to compose my own music alone (I only have ~50% of it done). There will be many guests though :) I’ve also been thinking about a long trip-hop/progressive song, mostly instrumental, closing the album. Can’t tell you more :)