Personnel:
Jef Giansily (p), Hermon Mehari (tp), Pierre Bernier (ts), Apostolos Sideris (b), Gautier Garrigue (d), Charlotte Wassy (vcl)
Reference: FSNT-710
Bar code: 8427328437103
Official release date: May 15th, 2025
Jef Giansily is a French pianist and composer, a student of Bernard Maury and a graduate of the Bill Evans Piano Academy. He has been living in Istanbul for twenty years, where he runs a music school. After releasing a first album, Sketches, recorded as a trio in Turkey, and a second, still unreleased opus, Jef Giansily returned temporarily to France to form an explosive quintet and record the impressive Insight at Studio de Meudon.
This is dense, powerful, and lyrical music, driven by an introspective, inner glimpse that suggests a state of alteration—where the power of music transforms our mood and our perception of time. This is moving, contrasting, and expressive music, marked by great sensitivity and a spiritual approach.
The eight tracks of Insight flow together wonderfully, forming a fluid and coherent narrative suite. Influenced by the great jazz ensembles of the 1960s (Miles Davis’ quintet or the Blue Note albums of Herbie Hancock or Wayne Shorter), Jef Giansily’s music remains unique, personal, and modern. It checks all the boxes: it’s both highly enjoyable to listen to and incredibly demanding (with a rhythm section unafraid of metric changes within a single piece).
Giansily often composes from a melody built around a bass line he has in mind: writing a theme is often linked to rhythmic counterpoint. His impressive left-hand technique is driven by persistent ostinatos and propelled by the strength and groove of his rhythm pair: the virtuosic playing of bassist Apostolos Sideris and the dynamic drive of drummer Gautier Garrigue.
While his collaboration with Gautier Garrigue is recent, his connection with Apostolos Sideris is longstanding. This Greek bassist, now based in Paris, lived in Istanbul for many years after outstanding musical studies in the United States, where he was a student of John Patitucci. Like a director carefully casting actors, Jef Giansily selects each musician for the uniqueness of their personality and their own inner voice.
He met saxophonist Pierre Bernier in Paris, with whom he immediately clicked, and he has a strong musical and personal friendship with the astounding American trumpeter Hermon Mehari, with whom he often performs in Istanbul. This quintet has one foot in the past of historic modern jazz ensembles, another in the future through innovative rhythmic forms, but both feet firmly planted in the exciting and joyful present of contemporary acoustic jazz.
The album begins with Alteration, driven by the energy of a complex and gripping groove, and a remarkable dramatic tension carried by the dialogue between piano and horns. This piece doesn’t end with a return to the theme but with a dazzling drum solo from Gautier Garrigue.
The tension and groove continue in Timeless Moment, which evokes a timeless vision through a suspended moment, beautifully represented by Apostolos Sideris’s bass solo. After these two particularly intense tracks, the mood softens with the beautiful ballad Mindscape, dedicated to Jef Giansily’s son, featuring a moving solo piano with sensitive, lyrical touch.
The music becomes especially dynamic in Latent Motion, with impressive metric changes, built around continuous motion that culminates in a flamboyant trumpet solo by Hermon Mehari. Heart’s Ways brings sunshine at the heart of the album, a radiant, simple, and peaceful track. In Imprint, the tempo picks up, giving each musician in the quintet space to fully express themselves. Another ballad follows with Quatre Septembre, played as a quartet (without trumpet), allowing saxophonist Pierre Bernier to deliver a beautiful solo.
Finally, the last track Silver Glints (with lyrics by Jef Giansily) is performed by singer Charlotte Wassy, whom Jef has accompanied at several festivals in Turkey (Ankara, Alanya, Istanbul). These shimmering silver reflections humanize the sometimes complex (but always accessible) music of this album, grounding it in something universal, and bringing this inner musical journey to a beautiful close—perfectly encapsulated by Jef Giansily’s words: “Music opens a singular temporality, participates in an invisible movement, manifests the imaginary, imprints an indelible mark upon us then vanishes, like the rays of a fleeting light.”
—Lionel Eskenazi
