Mister Solal

He is the peerless master of French jazz, and everywhere in Europe he is greeted like a visiting professor. But when he arrived in Manhattan for his American debut, his boat docked in a puddle of regulations. Not a word could be said of him until the clerks had had their day. When Union Card, Cabaret Card, and Social Security Card had legalized his presence at last, and the cognoscenti heard that Martial Solal was playing the piano at the Hickory House, the coolest ones dropped everything to go and hear him.

Rare Joke. Solal is the most admired European jazzman since the late Django Reinhardt, but no American company records his music, and his following here has been nourished strictly by reports from Paris. Oscar Peterson went to France and gave up a tour of Provence to spend six smoky nights in the Club St. Germain listening to Solal. Duke Ellington heard him in Paris and immediately pronounced him a soul brother. Jazz-Hot found in his music "a fireworks of musical refinement," and Downbeat passed the word along.

In New York, Solal's music turned out to be every bit as good as the echoes from Paris had suggested. He is an amazingly adept virtuoso, and he never lets his virtuosity run away with his musicianship. Instead, he pursues unconventional harmonic flights, exploring the full reach of the keyboard with a fanciful right hand and a strong and steady bass line. In improvisation, his imagination is rich to the point of bursting, and he punctuates his own ideas with ironic mockeries of the pianists he has learned something from--Fats Waller, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Art Tatum.

But Solal remains his own man, and aside from Reinhardt, he is the only European who has originated a strong and personal jazz style. French critics praise him most for not imitating Americans, and, as a token of respect, his French clique calls him "Mister Solal," subtly proclaiming him the equal of the greatly admired American expatriates

(TIME, May 17). In a rare joke with his audience, Solal risked a Franco-American pun last year by composing a parody of his own music and calling it Mystere Solal.

So Serious. Solal, 35, was once a regular in Paris jazz clubs, but he gave them up in favor of composing and playing concert tours. He has written film scores (Breathless) and highly complex jazz suites that lead his music lo the border of atonality--a frontier he intends to cross soon in compositions for jazz trio. His intricate style and intellectual leanings have caused occasional snipers to complain that he "plays white" and doesn't swingue,* but Paris suffers from a galloping case of Crow Jim, and to all but the heaviest listeners, Solal swings just fine.

Solal's American visit (six weeks at the Hickory House and a spot at the Newport Jazz Festival) is a tardy reward for a quietly brilliant career. He grew up in Algiers and first heard jazz when the G.I. radio followed soon after the American landings. For years he struggled to play precisely like Art Tatum, but when he came to Paris in 1950, he took off on his own. "I should try to make music that has much to say," he resolved, and with that he started serious study.

Solal's pied-noir family, sun-thirsty for Algiers, lives in Paris now, but his preoccupation with his music keeps him isolated from all but the smallest circle. When concert-hall success came to him, he even divorced his first wife. Said his regretful ex-mother-in-law: "Martial is a sweet boy--but so, so serious about his music."

* Jazz has given French a new verb: je swingue, vous swinguez-

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