| Jazz |
Some records announce themselves as events. Be Yourself, the deeply personal, beautifully crafted new album by French guitarist Bruno Bongarçon, is one of them. It is a labour of love, a musical confession, and one of the most moving tributes to a jazz guitar legend in recent memory.
Guitarist, composer and orchestra director, Bruno Bongarçon has accompanied in their tours many of the greatest French names: Michel Fugain, Enrico Macias, Gilbert Bécaud, Serge Lama, and the list goes on. In parallel, his career as a studio musician has taken him to play on more than two hundred albums (!!), recording with wonderful musicians such as Pino Palladino, André Ceccarelli, and the great arranger Pierre Bertrand. Yet for all that extraordinary breadth of experience, a true virtuoso equally at ease on classical guitar and electric guitar, capable of playing in every style from flamenco to jazz, blues to pop, Bongarçon has always harboured a deeper, more intimate musical ambition. That ambition finds its fullest expression here.
Be Yourself (Looking at Kenny Burrell)
It was in his teenage years that Bruno Bongarçon discovered Kenny Burrell’s album God Bless the Child, which marked him forever with its unique sonority, carried notably by a quintet of cellos interplaying with the rhythm section. Decades later, having toured the world and recorded with the finest jazz musicians in France, he decided the time had come to pay homage to his mentor.
God Bless the Child, recorded in 1971 and released on the CTI label, is considered by many the finest album Burrell ever made: a moody, atmospheric masterpiece in which arranger Don Sebesky understood Burrell’s understated approach to playing guitar, building an impressionistic soundscape around a man who could groove better than any of the fusioneers of the era.
Superbly surrounded by Pierre Bertrand, Alfio Origlio, André Ceccarelli and others, Bruno Bongarçon has created an unmissable tribute to a legendary figure of jazz guitar, with the contribution of a top-tier quintet of cellos assembled by Jean-Philippe Audin. The full ensemble for the recording brings together Bruno Bongarçon on guitar, Pierre Bertrand, Alfio Origlio on piano, Abraham Mansfarroll, Thomas Bramerie on bass and André Ceccarelli on drums, one of the most distinguished rhythm sections in French jazz, elevated by that luminous string section.
Each musician brings something irreplaceable to the project: Pierre Bertrand, composer, arranger, and flautist of exceptional refinement, lends the arrangements an architectural intelligence that echoes Don Sebesky’s work on the original God Bless the Child. Alfio Origlio, one of the most lyrical pianists in European jazz, provides the harmonic warmth and sensitivity that this music demands. Thomas Bramerie, on double bass, anchors everything with an elegance that is second to none, while the legendary André Ceccarelli, perhaps the finest jazz drummer France has ever produced, brings a touch so light and yet so precise that the music seems to breathe around his playing. And above it all, the quintet of cellos assembled by Jean-Philippe Audin provides exactly what Bongarçon dreamed of since that teenage encounter with Burrell’s masterpiece: strings that don’t decorate the music but inhabit it.
Through a series of original pieces evoking the aesthetic of Kenny Burrell, Bongarçon recreates the singular atmosphere of God Bless the Child. The compositions move with unhurried authority through blues-inflected jazz, soulful ballads, and gently swinging mid-tempo pieces, always with that distinctive warmth of the jazz guitar tradition at their centre. The cellos arrive not as embellishment but as conversation partners, sometimes shadowing the guitar, sometimes pulling against it, always deepening the emotional resonance of the music.
The sole cover on the album is the title track itself, Be Yourself, originally recorded by Kenny Burrell on God Bless the Child. It sounds like a manifesto: “be yourself”, the great Kenny’s ultimate lesson of. In Bongarçon’s hands, it is both a loving tribute and a declaration of artistic independence: a guitarist who has spent a career serving others’ music finally stepping forward to say, clearly and beautifully, who he is.
The eleven original compositions that follow Kenny Burrel’s title reveal Bongarçon as a composer of real depth and emotional intelligence. There are moments of bluesy swagger, passages of tender introspection, and stretches of collective improvisation where the ensemble seems to find a shared pulse that transcends arrangement and enters the realm of pure feeling. Throughout, Bongarçon’s guitar playing embodies the qualities he most admires in Burrell: graceful storytelling, immaculate chording, and emotion so rich it seems to seep through the instrument itself.
To fully appreciate Be Yourself, one must understand the enormity of what Bongarçon is honouring. Burrell’s artistry is well-documented in his years with Oscar Peterson and on his first dates as a leader on the Blue Note label, but God Bless the Child remains an overlooked masterpiece in his catalogue, a record of extraordinary human warmth, where soul jazz, blues and ballads coexist, Kenny’s trademark chord melody always at the core. Bongarçon absorbed all this not like a student copying a master, but like an artist who learned by listening to the master and who pays homage to him by giving himself body and soul to reach his. And he gets there, with humility, respecting Kenny’s spirit in his compositions.
Be Yourself is a must, a record that will stand as one of the most beautiful guitar albums. It is warm, deeply musical, impeccably performed, and above all, deeply sincere. Bruno Bongarçon has given us the album of a lifetime: an act of gratitude to a hero, and a gift to anyone who loves jazz guitar played with intelligence, soul, and an open heart.
The great Kenny Burrell’s final lesson, be yourself, has been heard, understood, and answered magnificently.
Frankie Pfeiffer
Editor in chief – PARIS-MOVE
PARIS-MOVE, May 21st, 2026
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Release Party de “Be Yourself – Looking at Kenny Burrell” le 02 Juin 2026 à 20h30 au New Morning
Adresse: New Morning, 7-9 Rue des Petites Ecuries, 75010 Paris – France
Line-up pour ce concert:
– Bruno Bongarçon, guitare
– Pierre Bertrand, flûte traversière
– Alfio Origlio, Fender Rhodes
– Abraham Mansfarroll, percussions
– Thomas Bramerie, contrebasse
– André Ceccarelli, batterie
