Love for Chet / Stéphane Belmondo

Stéphane Belmondo: trumpet, flugelhorn
Jesse Van Ruller: guitar
Thomas Bramerie: double bass.

Passing away prematurely in 1988, Chet Baker made an indelible mark on the public. He had this accuracy, this unique emotion, this ability to make his soul speak and touch the hearts of his audience like no other. He has rightly become an iconic figure in jazz.

The trumpeter and buglist Stéphane Belmondo is one of the most gifted and appreciated musician and composer of his generation, many times awarded and with numerous and brilliant collaborations with Yusef Lateef, Milton Nascimento, Michel Legrand or Dee Dee Bridgewater. He was eighteen when he met the jazz giant in the 1980s. Chet Baker, who then qualified Stéphane Belmondo as the most promising European trumpeter, became his friend and spiritual father.
With "Love for Chet", the first part of a triptych dedicated to the work of the trumpeter, Stéphane Belmondo pays him an intense and poetic tribute. To do this, he chose the trio formula, without piano or drums, intimate as his eldest loved him, accompanied by the incredible Dutch guitarist Jesse Van Ruller, and the solid and faithful friend of all time, Thomas Bramerie, at the double bass, who also played with Chet. The resulting music, without being a copy of that of the master, reveals the sensitivity, the delicacy, the fragility, the art of the ballad so present in Chet Baker.

For the first time and exclusively for the Festival, the Cluny Museum opens its doors to jazz and allows access to its remarkable Frigidarium dating from the 1st century AD to listen to it.
The unique opportunity, for an evening in the heart of this jewel of ancient Paris, to feel deeply the cry of love of Stéphane Belmondo to his friend and master of pure emotion.