French pianist Benjamin Moussay will be releasing a solo piano album titled Promontoire on May 29, 2020. Moussay appeared on three earlier ECM albums with Louis Sclavis’ groups: Sources (recorded 2011), Salt and Silk Melodies (2014) and Characters on a Wall (2018).
Moussay calls Promontoire “a solitary dance with the flow of inner rhythm.” The album focuses on improvisation: “Written pretexts are infinitely altered according to the moment. Playing solo piano, I know the starting point and the destination. Mystery lies in the surprises of the journey.”
Promontoire is named after a place in the Vosges mountains, in eastern France, that is important to Moussay.
Benjamin Moussay studied classical piano at the Strasbourg Conservatory, before switching to jazz composition and arrangement at the Paris Conservatory, where his instructors included François Jeanneau and Jean-François Jenny-Clark.
In 1998, Moussay won the Martial Solal International Jazz Piano Competition and has gone on to become a leading artist in the French and international jazz scene, working with Louis Sclavis, Glenn Ferris, Marc Ducret, Archie Shepp, Tony Malaby, Vincent Courtois, Daniel Humair and many others, and leading his own groups, including his long-running trio with drummer Eric Echampard and bassist Arnault Cuisinier.