Jazz

Diego Imbert Sextet, Guerres: Jazz and Poetry Facing the Wars Within and Without

Guerres (“Wars”) is an album born of necessity and which comes from an inner need. The double bassist and composer Diego Imbert has said he wanted to put into music the troubling state of the contemporary world: armed conflicts, social fractures, political and ideological tensions, but also the inner wars that run through individuals. The result, he says, is an unstable and anxious landscape that is often hard to grasp except through emotion. Speaking about the project, he admits that it lets him exorcise some things. He is very worried about the present moment, about the wars under way and about growing populism, and he wonders what world his children will grow up in.

The presentation text written by Pascal Anquetil says the album is neither an abstract manifesto, nor a cry of anger, nor an exercise in style. I like this description, because it names what Guerres avoids. Imbert does not want to describe war in an illustrative way. He wants to question its human, psychological and poetic echoes, with tension running between chaos and balance, violence and fragility, silence and overflowing sound.

For this album, Diego Imbert’s group is a sextet, which Imbert describes as an enlargement of his usual quartet with two decisive presences: Claudia Solal (voice), Quentin Ghomari (trumpet and flugelhorn), David El-Malek (saxophone), Manu Codjia (guitar), Franck Agulhon (drums) and Diego Imbert (double bass).

The quartet at the core, with El-Malek, Ghomari and Agulhon, has been playing his music for years. Imbert has led a quartet since 2008, with three studio albums, À l’ombre du saule pleureur (2009), Next Move (2011) and Colors (2015), so the rapport between these players is not new.

The choice of line-up is at the heart of the writing. The electric guitar of Manu Codjia, who has crossed paths with Imbert sporadically for many years, brings a new textural and harmonic dimension. It can evoke rupture and tearing as readily as light or calm. Claudia Solal’s voice, for her part, is not thought of as a simple melodic vehicle but as a space for narration, breath and poetic speech, sometimes sung, sometimes spoken, sometimes simply a sound presence. She had already worked with Imbert on a project built on poems by Guillaume Apollinaire, so the partnership is a continuation.

The poems are the album’s backbone. Imbert and Solal chose six poets, three men and three women, French and English-language: Arthur Rimbaud, Boris Vian, Antonin Artaud, Renée Vivien, Sara Teasdale and Emily Dickinson. Here is how they fall across the tracklisting:

1. Le dormeur du Val (Rimbaud) – 6:29
2. La fleur au fusil – 6:06
3. Morts inquiets (Renée Vivien) – 8:52
4. Guernica – 5:47
5. L’évadé – Le temps de vivre (Boris Vian) – 9:24
6. There Will Come Soft Rains (Sara Teasdale) – 4:57
7. Carabobo – 5:20
8. My Portion Is Defeat – Today (Emily Dickinson) – 2:39
9. Le feu – 3:43
10. Désolation – 2:39
11. Prière (Antonin Artaud) – 5:53
12. Le crépuscule – 3:38

The poems and the war titles look at conflict from different angles. Rimbaud’s “Le dormeur du Val” is the famous poem of a young soldier lying in a green valley who is, we realise, dead. “La fleur au fusil” recalls the image of marching to war with a flower in the rifle, and “Guernica” recalls the bombing that became a symbol of civilian horror. Teasdale’s poem imagines nature carrying on, indifferent, after the end of human war. Dickinson’s brief, bitter title speaks of a day on which defeat is all one has. One can see how Imbert builds a path through public and private wars alike. Tracks 8 and 10 are credited to the whole sextet, which suggests collective writing and improvisation.

Anquetil’s note offers a piece of advice: listen to the album in one go, to keep its narrative logic and feel its dramatic progression. Imbert says the same. For him the sequence of pieces is meant to form a global story, an emotional crossing rather than a series of separate tracks. Each piece is conceived as a fragment, a scene or a state: rising tension, collapse, suspension, resistance, memory. This fits his declared taste for what he calls slow music. Diego defends the album as a whole: its order has been thought through, and no piece is isolated, since each one is tied to the one before and the one after. In an age of short formats and instant consumption, that is a position, and Guerres is a very good illustration of it.

The writing, Anquetil notes, is built around forms that are open or written out, with an important place for improvisation and listening, and a precise construction of climates, trajectories and balances. He describes a moving, shifting writing lifted by a solemn lyricism that never becomes exaggerated or pathetic. It calls to mind the world of Imbert’s master, Charlie Haden, and he singles out Prière in particular. The link is not accidental, since Imbert recorded a Tribute to Charlie Haden in 2018, nominated for the Victoires du Jazz.

Anquetil also asks a very good question: is music the best space for such a project? Unlike words, he argues, notes are not signs. Music can only brush against meaning without ever stating it. What it can do, in the flash of the moment, is evoke and move through sound and form alone, with an emotion that is immediate but ineffable. Imbert has given the notes a poetic supply of words to lean on, and the combination is what makes the project interesting: a text sung, spoken or breathed by Solal, and music that neither illustrates nor explains it. The album is deeply moving throughout, with the music and lyrics casting an intense light on the wars and conflicts currently shaking the world.

Born in Paris, Diego Imbert has just celebrated his 60th birthday. He began on the violin after seeing David Oistrakh on television at the age of six, moved to the electric bass as a teenager, and has played the double bass since 1995, studying with Jean-François Jenny-Clark, Hein van de Geyn and Eddie Gómez, among others. Before music became his profession he trained as an agricultural engineer in Nancy and worked in that field for a year, until, at 25, he decided with Franck Agulhon and other friends that it was possible to live from his passion. That decision led to a career as one of the most sought-after sidemen in French jazz. He spent more than twenty years with Bireli Lagrène, ten with Didier Lockwood until Lockwood’s death in 2018, and three with Richard Galliano, and he still plays with Enrico Pieranunzi, besides working with Archie Shepp and Aldo Romano. As a leader, he has fronted his own quartet since 2008, recorded the Tribute to Charlie Haden with Pieranunzi and André Ceccarelli in 2018, and written Le vent nocturne, symphonic poems on Apollinaire for 20 musicians. His 2020 album Interplay – The Music of Bill Evans, made with Alain Jean-Marie, won the Prix du disque français of the Académie du Jazz.

Those who want to hear it live have two appointments. The group will play on November 14, 2026, in concert at Studio 104 of the Maison de la Radio et de la Musique in Paris, with Imbert saying it will go out live on France Musique’s Jazz Club. A tour will follow in spring 2027.

Guerres is a serious, tender and ambitious album. It faces the wars of our time without slogans, trusting poems, tone colour and the listener’s attention. A bassist who has spent decades at the side of great names, and for years in his own quartet, here brings together two exceptional guests and six poets to say what is hard to say. It asks for listening time, and it repays it. Great, great album!

Frankie Pfeiffer
Editor in chief – PARIS-MOVE

PARIS-MOVE, October 8th, 2026

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Trebim Music / L’Autre Distribution – Release date: November 13, 2026

Musicians:
Claudia Solal: voice
Quentin Ghomari: trumpet and flugelhorn
David El-Malek: saxophone
Manu Codjia: guitar
Franck Agulhon: drums
Diego Imbert: double bass

Tracklisting:
1. Le dormeur du Val (Rimbaud) – 6:29
2. La fleur au fusil – 6:06
3. Morts inquiets (Renée Vivien) – 8:52
4. Guernica – 5:47
5. L’évadé – Le temps de vivre (Boris Vian) – 9:24
6. There Will Come Soft Rains (Sara Teasdale) – 4:57
7. Carabobo – 5:20
8. My Portion Is Defeat – Today (Emily Dickinson) – 2:39
9. Le feu – 3:43
10. Désolation – 2:39
11. Prière (Antonin Artaud) – 5:53
12. Le crépuscule – 3:38