Catherine, Morello, Faller

"Pourquoi" is a composition by Philip Catherine lending its name to the second studio encounter with his guitar confrere Paul Morello and bass player Sven Faller.
A "Pourquoi" which – yes, you read this right – is written without a question mark. A little
word play by the jazz guitar master Philip Catherine and that those who know him will certainly recognize, as he also is a witty man, in life and on stage. A living, young-at-heart jazz legend turning eighty in 2022. A musician who is appreciated as a national hero in Belgium, the small country with the great jazz scene.
These three top artists perform with a virtually natural flow, stylistically assured through all genres, at times vivaciously swinging, at others contemplative and condensed like a film score.
After their first album "Manoir de mes rêves" and In over fifty concerts, Catherine, Morello and Faller have let their trio art and repertoire mature. Like a good wine.
They have developed an interplay of chamber-music-like quality, avoiding cheap 'guitar
battles', concentrated on constantly listening and reacting and completed by Faller's double bass with a sure pulse and canon-like counter melodies.
While the debut album centered around the trio's admiration for Django Reinhardt, Antonio Carlos Jobim, and jazzy interpretations of French chansons from the 50s and 60s, "Pourquoi"
puts original compositions into focus. With the exception of "First Waltz" by Belgian film composer Frédéric Devreese (1929-2020) and the Mediterranean-like "Frontera" by Nicola Andrioli, the repertoire of "Pourquoi" is written by Catherine and Morello.
The music of this trio masters the art of evoking places, persons and moods so intensely, that they all of a sudden become familiar, even when you have never tasted the wine at "Chateau Plagne", nor having met "Louisella".
The evocative vividness and atmospheric intensity of this music is largely due to Philip Catherine, the great melodist and 'chansonnier' of the jazz guitar, who can, as Paulo Morello
states "make the guitar sing and sound like nobody else". A melodious excellence which embraces the whole trio and penetrates each solo, from Catherine's unique sound, lyrical phrases and groovy sense of swing, to Paul Morello who adopts the more acoustic and Brazilian part on this album.
What had begun with a jam of the two guitarists at the backstage of the "International Jazzwoche Burghausen" in 2010 has – twelve years later, and without a question mark –
grown into one of the best trio settings Europe has to offer. Live and on two albums.