Two years after the revelation« Opening » which was awarded the Django Reinhardt Prize from the Academie du Jazz, Fred Nardin is back with the bass player Or Bareket and the drummer Leon Parker for the Fred Nardin Trio’s second album: « Look Ahead ». « You can be both as intellectual and as soulful as you want, and the swing beat is powerful but subtle. I think you have to devote yourself to it exclusively to do it at that level”. Mulgrew Miller, DownBeat Magazine. A pianist bred on experience(s) and tradition, Fred Nardin has only one aim in life: to play as well as he can, just as long as it swings. Reasonable but determined, passionate and enthralling when it is a question of tackling the great masters - Kenny Barron, McCoy Tyner or Mulgrew Miller –every day Fred Nardin gets a little closer to his objective, and « Look Ahead » is the resounding proof. Co-founder of The Amazing Keystone Big-Band, chosen sideman for Cecile McLorin Salvant, Bria Skonberg, Jacques Schwarz-Bart, Natalia M.King, Stefano Di Battista, Jesse Davis and Gael Horellou, regular feature « After-Hours » at the Duc Des Lombards in Paris : Fred Nardin is everywhere where jazz is happening but it is with the trio of the album « Opening » that he was really discovered in 2017. On the Bass: Or Bareket, a promising youngster from New York, brought up between Buenos-Aires and Tel-Aviv. And on the drums, a reference: the immense American Leon Parker. « Melody in the middle of the trio » Telerama « Fred Nardin sets a very high benchmark, an explosive cocktail » Liberation « Swing, depth, a lot of humility and already gutsy coming from a little giant.” Jazz News « I had this idea in mind for a long time » says Fred Nardin. I knew that to play with Leon would necessitate maturity and having something to say in order to get to something worthwhile. At 30 years old I said to myself: OK, let’s go for it, it’s time » Having met in the cellar of the Sunset/Sunside in Paris in 2008, Fred Nardin came across Leon Parker again in New-York in 2016. « he introduced me to Or in his Harlem appartment and it was there, as soon as we had played the first notes that I knew that we would see it through to the end! ”The cornerstones of this instant trio: time, desire, pleasure, a certain taste for tradition. “ We like it when it swings. When it really swings well, and it’s no laughing matter! » If the affinity with Or Bareket is exemplary, it is really the quasi-filial relationship between Leon Parker and Fred Nardin which makes all the difference. « Leon has played with Mulgrew Miller and Kenny Barron and I have listened to a good deal of his recordings with Jacky Terrasson. Transmission takes place in this way. Having him in the trio is fantastic but you have to be present, and ready to respond, otherwise you will be destablised. Leon is very demanding, very charismatic, he has taught me an enormous amount. We spent entire weeks working just on the mental, being in the music at every moment:...