Mulo Francel & Nicole Heartseeker - Moon River (2023)

In their brand new fourth album, the duo Nicole Heartseeker & Mulo Francel offer a new perspec-tive on the Great American Songbook when its melodies sound like Chopin or Erik Satie. When Fly me to the Moon dances a nocturnal waltz with Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, when Lullaby of Birdland unfolds a baroque flair. A new listening experience is created when a piano refreshes these old hits with classical patterns and a saxophone flavors them with elegant jazz improvisations. In their album Forever Young, released in 2021, the duo ventured into an artistic dialogue across stylistic and temporal boundaries by improvising on old masters. Composers from Handel and Bach to Schubert and Piazzolla were given a whole new listening per-spective and emerged from a musical fountain of youth. Now the two musicians turn the tables: melodies from jazz, from the American Songbook, songs by Joe Cocker or Freddie Mercury enter a seemingly contrary world of sound: classical, cautiously stri-ding and atmospherically wide open. Pianist Nicole Heartseeker describes her idea for the new album Moon River: I find it exciting to combine different musical worlds. Exciting, even in ever-greens like Fly me to the Moon, to merge the genres of jazz and classical. To put them in an unusual light and then to experience how strong the points of contact can be.