Not so far from the "Blue Note", Born in Madrid, Geneva citizen by heart, and citizen of the World by principle, jazz pianist Marcos Jimenez proves with his latest solo album, that music stays, and from far, the only universal language.
Switzerland is full of pianists, of good quality of course, but whose lack of original inspiration, leads them to a deadly Privacy. There are however some rarities, like the magnificent Thierry Lang, sensitive artists and inventive, subtle melodist that are worth the stop.
Marcos Jimenez is definitely one of them. Unwilling to succumb to the siren charms of the facility, the musician realized that music is about feeling, sensuality. And alone or with his trio, the note is there, that hits the right place, strolling, under a smooth and efficient fingering.
Is it because of his origins that Jimenez, althought well established in Switzerland for several decades, composes and plays with such a mediterranean warmth, with an indisputable technique, but only to service emotion ? Is it because of his pianistic references, Hancock, Jarrett, Evans, Paul Bley, that he imposes to himself those requirements ? Or maybe it is because of his attraction to the diversity that makes him a pianist "atypical" attentive to all the music.
Delicate and varied as a composer, Marcos Jimenez is not one of those musicians that one can label, nor format. Although from the classic, yet it is this sense of openness that makes him go further, and breathe. In addition, he knows how to surround himself and also meet with "the right people" as Daniel Humair, the brilliant drummer, and Erik Truffat with which it maintains relationships.
Accustomed to play with his trio, his last solo album reflects a long search began, and, let us be certain, not ready to stop. We would like to discover more often artists of this caliber.

Daniel Le Bris in “La vie protestante - feb 2009”

La prova del piano solo è da sempre molto impegnativa. Quello che ascoltiamo grazie alla casa discografica svizzera Altrisuoni è il soliloquio di Marcos Jimenez, pianista di origini spagnole, impegnato che qui si dedica a standard oltre ad un brano originale, "Lisa's Land III," con tipiche cadenze evansiane.

Al pubblico italiano è noto per avere inciso in trio sulla Philology. Qui conferma le sue doti: bel tocco, attenzione alle dinamiche e controllo su quello che fa, di solito su tempi medi e lenti che avvolgono l'ascoltatore in una trama notturna, seducente, che lo ammalia per tutta la duranta del disco, lasciando dopo una sorta di torpore benefico. Nei tempi moderni così movimentati, la musica di Jimenez è un'oasi di benessere, che piacerà ad un pubbico trasversale, da chi apprezza il genere classico a chi invece di solito si abbandona ai suoni della pop music più raffinata.

Nello stile di Jimenez oltre a tracce di Bill Evans e di Keith Jarrett, la Poesia ha un ruolo preciso che immette quella vitalità che evita che il tutto scivoli verso un prodotto patinato, bello ed incapace di svegliare emozioni. Ma le inquietudini mancano, e, del resto, se non le si ha è inutile andarle a cercare, a spese della sincerità di quello che si suona.


Vittorio Lo Conte in All About Jazz

Marcos Jimenez is likely a new name as the pianist has recorded exclusively for European and Japanese labels. A native of Spain who relocated to Switzerland at a young age, Jimenez is unaccompanied on I Thought About You, which mostly concentrates on standards. He has an Impressionist approach to slow ballads, using lush chords while allowing the music plenty of room to breathe, as in his pastoral arrangements of “My One and Only Love” and “Bess, You is My Woman Now.” Jimenez takes a different path than expected through Thelonious Monk's “Monk's Dream,” playing the bass line with a softer touch than most pianists while emphasizing the lyricism of its theme, adding a few glistening detours along the way. He slows the tempo of “I Thought About You” to a crawl, working in a bluesy flavor, while “Black Orpheus” emphasizes the melody in a very subdued setting. Jimenez delves into less familiar works like the bittersweet ballad “Alfonsina Y El Mar” and the hymn-like “Un Oranger,” two songs that deserve to be better known in the New World. His one original, “Lisa's Land III,” is reminiscent of Bill Evans.

By Ken Dryden in All About Jazz New-York Sep 2008

Emission JazzZ RSR-2 du 29 avril 2008

Top

Emission Radio Paradiso RSR1 du 28 mars 2008

There are some reasons on this CD to disturb sectarian ones and to charm the others : there are actually two CDs in one present in this complex opus. The title and the booklet launch the listener on an ecological track for half confirmed by contemplative frolicking of a trio in a cosmic state of harmony: imaginary elegiac, cherished keyboard, romantic preludes. So far, the "mehldaumanes" follow. Jimenez tests their capacity of integration by introducing into this quiet universe several turbulent episodes which disturb this climat which makes it all the more credible.

M.B. in Le Temps (march 2004)

Marcos Jimenez, Geneva based pianist of Spanish origin, is one of the many pupils of another “Genevois” of adoption, the Of Bordeaux Michel Bastet. Left the pop music, arrived in the territories of the jazz and the classical music, this musician with the step of type-setter traversed an atypical path which explains in a certain manner freshness of his trio. One indeed finds in the new disc of Jimenez this ' small something "which makes it possible to the musician to make share his language and its emotions, even with the listeners who are not “specialists".

Marcos Jimenez takes up the challenge which consists in bringing up to date the traditional tradition of the piano jazz - in fact the school of Be bop and hard-bop which has counted thousands of small formations and represents for thirty years one of the dominant currents of the jazz. The result is more than convincing, in particular from complicity without fault of the three soloists. The new album joins together a composition of the young person and talented double bass player Patrice Moret, four compositions of the author, an instrumental version of Léo Ferré "Avec le Temps", of which the song absent does not resound of it less superb way, and a series of standards sorted on the shutter. By affirming the timelessness of the kind, and going beyond the fonne to open welcome spaces of improvisation, by interiorizing the swing and the melody to go to essence, the pianist Marcos Jimenez found his own language and succeeds in convincing there where others - and not the least - are satisfied with an exercise of style which must much with the letter, but little with the spirit of the jazz.

Christian Steulet in SwissDisc.ch (june 2000)

Another artistic piano trio from Italy. Marcos Jimenez, who has both the seriousness of Monk and the sentimentalism of Keith, is expressing his passion through keyboards. The story titled "After the Rain" is full of romance begins with a raining monochrome sky and a rainbow shows at the end.

Tower recs mag.

Top