Andrew Boudreau
Like many of us, pianist Andrew Boudreau has formed strong emotional connections to particular places. It could be his native Nova Scotia, or his longtime home of Montreal, or the surroundings of New England Conservatory in Boston, or his current daily environment in the fertile jazz scene of Brooklyn. Neon, Boudreau’s debut as a leader, is a collection of pieces that mostly have a specific “geographic stamp,” a poetic linkage in his mind. In this music, as violist and ethnomusicologist Tanya Kalmanovitch writes in her liner notes, “Boudreau’s head and hands make biography and geography audible.”
The title track, “Neon,” is a study with spooky chords and what Boudreau terms “vertical sounds.” It is one of two pieces lasting just a minute or so. With this title Boudreau wants to evoke how neon things (items, light) appear consistent or static wherever they are. In its brevity and its relative stasis, “Neon” stands in contrast to the longer narrative-based pieces, “almost as an anti-theme,” Boudreau states.
Boudreau is fortunate enough to have bandmates who’ve grown together over a span of years. Tenor saxophonist Neta Raanan and drummer Eviatar Slivnik were Berklee students, just minutes away from Boudreau and his NEC colleague Simón Willson, when the four became acquainted. Boudreau and Willson have another project, Family Plan, a trio with drummer Vicente Hansen that debuted eponymously on the Endectomorph Music label (“these young musicians speak with fresh voices individually and with great collective originality” — Frank Carlberg).
