Team Aquatic Aron Ottignon

• 1 Starfish 04:08
• 2 Waterfalls 03:14
• 3 Waves 03:29
• 4 The Jungle 07:17
• 5 Ocean 04:55
• 6 Team Aquatic 03:48
• 7 Hot Tub 04:43
• 8 Rivers 03:47
• 9 Stonefish 04:47
• 10 The Nile 03:41
• 11 Rothesay Bay 02:39
• Total Runtime 46:28

Info zu Team Aquatic

“Big gestures, fat sounds and monster grooves, with a youthful energy that’s yoked to genuine musical ability” (The Guardian)

Following a string of acclaimed EPs, virtuoso experimental jazz pianist Aron Ottingnon is set to release his debut full length album. ‘Team Aquatic’ will be released via Blue Note.

Dividing his time from now on between Paris and Berlin, Aron Ottignon has been recording Team Aquatic these past two years in the company of producers Paul “Seiji” Dolby and Rodi Kirk.

As his first album under his own name, ‘Team Aquatic’ takes up the tale exactly where Aron has left it, even to the point of having its eponymous title-track dedicated to the good times enjoyed by the group during its London years. Starfish, by the way, was composed during that period, with its 6/4 rhythms enacted on wooden drums from the South Pacific.

So this musician’s credo is marked by absolute cohesion, but also by the spirit of adventure: Rivers is nourished by Peruvian traditional music, while Waves and Ocean draw inspiration from a voyage to Reunion Island accompanied by kayamba rhythms. Sustained by heavy electronic claps, The Jungle was born the day before Aron went to Calais: at Christmas 2015 he arrived at the camp to assist refugees for a week.

The eleven-title album – and three bonus tracks – fades to a close with the sublime ballad Rothesay Bay, named after the beach where his grandparents have always lived. He was born there, another circle complete.

Aron Ottignon, piano
Samuel Dubois, steel pan, percussion
Jose Joyette, drums, bass

Aron Ottignon
is an extremely gifted pianist. Prizes have been rained on him ever since he began playing, and he could have fallen into the virtuosity trap and lent his talents to Rachmaninoff and Ellington, hiding behind those ten fingers. But an authoritative persona and some remarkable artistic convictions were maturing beneath the surface in this child prodigy, and today, from Auckland (where he was born in 1982) to Paris, and from Woodkid to Stromae, people have seen that the winding path he's taken was guided by an arrow-straight ambition that finally materialised in a first album.

Speaking of a pianist with a liking for repetitive motifs, it is tempting to say that Aron Ottignon has come full circle. From Blue Note to Blue Note: the label, on which the New Zealander makes his arrival, was also home to jazz pianist Andrew Hill, one of his first teachers. The story goes back to his childhood, and to a family where music was no stranger: his grandmother tickled the ivories in London's first silent-screen cinema before caressing the strings of a harp behind the eccentric Liberace; as for Aron's father, he played saxophone in Manfred Mann's quintet and, when accompanying visiting jazzmen playing concerts in Auckland, he used to invite them home to give advice to the young Aron. Andrew Hill was one of them; he met Aron when the prodigy was just ten.

Booklet für Team Aquatic