ABOUT BACH MIRROR
Still today, Johann-Sebastian Bach’s music continues on travelling and inspiring new generations of artists. Well beyond the Baroque era that saw it bloom, it lives on reinvented. BACH MIRROR, the second album from French pianist Thomas Enhco and Bulgarian marimba player Vassilena Serafimova, is a shining example. This collection of 13 new pieces approaches the German composer’s music, ever-present on the record, with total freedom. Each track is a new reflection of a Bach composition - burst, reversed, or multiplied. The opening track ‘Avalanche’ introduces the Prelude N°2 from the first book of the Well-Tempered Clavier to repetitive music while Cantata, born from the Sheep May Safely Graze aria, moves away from it as a new, less familiar image. And Silence is not just a piano transposition: it is from another world, well aware of Satie and Debussy’s legacy. From a motif, a harmony or a mood, Thomas Enhco and Vassilena Serafimova draw new creations, where the round and warm sound of the marimba dances with the crystalline one of the piano. For these versatile musicians, Johann-Sebastian Bach’s music is not just counterpoints and temperament: it’s a rhythmic flow. BACH MIRROR is an invigorating whirlwind, carried from beginning to end by virtuoso tempi and a duo playing with Bach’s music like two kids jumping in a puddle - for the fun of watching the clouds and sky turn into something new. And when everything stops, almost as a surprise, we find ourselves hanging, dazed on the edge of an abyss, quite far from a simple homage.
ABOUT THOMAS ENHCO AND VASSILENA SERAFIMOVA:
A remarkable percussions and marimba player, Vassilena Serafimova was born in Bulgaria in 1985. Thomas Enhco was born in France three years later, a jazz pianist looking for freedom. Both were surrounded by music from their earliest age, having been raised by musician parents (percussions players and arrangers for her, classical musicians for him - before his mother remarried with Didier Lockwood, the famous jazz violinist). Each experimented with music in its full extent: formal and popular, written and improvised. And both began studying the violin before finding their own instrumental path. For him the piano, for her the marimba. She traveled, perfected her technique, not going unnoticed, and won awards at the most prestigious European competitions like Munich and Stuttgart before settling in France. He grew up listening to the greatest jazz musicians, accustomed from an early age to the smoke and intensity of clubs, releasing his first album at 16 years old, before starting an international career. Two children of Music, two traveling prodigies, both performers and composers, who would eventually meet in 2009 for a shared performance. Since then, they have performed together all over the world, often presenting new creations. In 2016, they released their first album as a duo, Funambules via the Deutsche Grammophon label, where their takes on Mozart and Saint-Saëns met the duo’s own compositions, reconciling centuries of music, fidelity and invention. In 2017, they won the Second Prize at the Osaka International Chamber Music Competition in Japan. Three years later, BACH MIRROR strengthens their thriving alchemy.
