Maybe this is "Jazz according to Laurent Cugny". Here he chooses some classic material - standards from Duke Ellington, Joe Zawinul, the Beatles, Michel Jonasz - and then introduces a few of his own compositions. The result is Zeitgeist, an album written in a universal language whose music traverses different periods and transcends melodies. Pianist, arranger, composer (and music lecturer), bandleader Laurent Cugny here conducts the best musicians France can offer, in a ten-piece orchestra whose instruments are played with precision and brilliance. Zeitgeist is masterfully electric, taking its colours from Cugny's taste for the avant-garde at the dawn of the Seventies: it makes you think and it gives you a kick. A jubilant record where Cugny shows a unique sense of melody, and his vision of jazz history... with a boundless joy in sharing his own definition of jazz.

Augustin Bondoux / Patrick Frémeaux