Tour'n'sol Prod.
Académie Charles Cros 2025 Great Prize.
A musical setting of poems by Prévert, Cendrars, and also by anonymous poets… A project of great finesse…
Chant Song, Mathias Lévy’s new album, is an endless dialogue, a perpetual quest for balance and meaning between the voice and the strings, the breath of song and that of the accordion, the words of poets like Prévert and Cendrars, and the joy of collective improvisation and freedom…
With Chant Song, Mathias Lévy puts melody at the very centre of his creation. Fascinated by their apparent simplicity, their emotional charge, the way they belong to the collective memory and are like a soundtrack to our lives, he has created a new repertoire to honour these melodies. Connecting emotions and sound, succeeding in telling a story through improvisation and natural understanding, this is the violinist’s ultimate melodic quest. To achieve this, he has brought together his long-time companions Sébastien Giniaux, Jean Philippe Viret and Laurent Derache, as well as the singer Lou Tavano, integrating vocals into his music for the first time.
Mathias Lévy - violin, vocals, composition
Lou Tavano - vocal
Laurent Derache - accordion, vocals
Sébastien Giniaux - guitar, cello, vocals
Jean-Philippe Viret - doublebasse, vocals
Jazz News (Jazz Sous les Pommiers 2026 festival feature)
« Mathias Lévy summoned a deeply moving urgency to live. A dialogue with the words of poets, with the voice of singer Lou Tavano, and with the exceptional playing of Sébastien Giniaux on cello and guitar, Jean Philippe Viret on double bass, and Laurent Derache on accordion. Mathias Lévy finally set our eyes shining with an absolutely Dantesque violin solo opening the song ‘l’Espoir’. A memorable moment at the Magic Mirrors. »
Jazz News (Jazz in Langourla 2026 festival feature)
« Far from conventional formats, the quintet favors listening, storytelling, and emotion, turning each concert into a human experience as much as a musical one. »
Télérama (TTTT)
« With ‘Chant Song,’ we have one of the best jazz albums of 2025. »
« You have to be as much a wanderer at heart as Mathias Lévy, and moor yourself as firmly as he does to the most violent feelings, to shatter difficulty and deliver an album of such beauty. »
Citizen Jazz
« A record that cleanses the soul the way you throw a room open to the four winds, leaving you a little sharper, more sensitive to the tiniest details of the world. Journeys deposit something in us, but they also take something away. We set off loaded down and come back lighter. »
Fip
« Chant Song, Mathias Lévy’s beautiful, gentle new program, in the form of a collection of poems recited by the strings, the breath of the accordion, and that of Lou Tavano, the fifth member of this small (deluxe) chamber orchestra. For great words, great bards! »
Choc Jazz Magazine – 14 essential albums of September
Lionel Eskenazi – Jazz Magazine
« We have in France a great jazz violinist, a worthy heir to Stéphane Grappelli and Jean-Luc Ponty, with a unique tone and sonority inherited from classical music, coupled with a rare sense of improvisation and a perfect command of swing. In full command of his means, with the maturity of a 43-year-old musician and boundless curiosity, Mathias Lévy never makes the same album twice and always moves forward. »
