David Aubaile’s childhood was imbued with multiple cultural environments and sound scapes, broadening his intellectual horizons and fostering creative hybrids. His mother, an ethnobotanist and classical music enthusiast, and his father, an engineer passionate about jazz, raised him in London before moving to Toledo (Spain) where he was surrounded by the secular beauty of 11th century Arab syncretism and Mudejar singing. Back in Paris, he begins his classical training on the flute, learns piano and harmony by himself, goes on to study law and classical Japanese before life and luck bring him back to music....
After participating in numerous projects around the world with renowned artists and musicians, he comes to the realization that Belleville, Bamako, Yerevan, Algiers, Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Istanbul, Belgrade, and many other places have coalesced in his mind and body. Music will thus become his own form of cross-breeding, his personal travel digest. Today, he shifts and slides through musical traditions to reach beyond and create his own melody. Definitions, straight lines, who is who and what is what, as well as direct legacies, all fade into insignificance.
What emerges are musical pieces with simple harmonies, both European and Mediterranean, often in odd meters. Rhythms with 5, 7, or 11 beat patterns, far from the alienation of binary manichaeism; prime numbers akin to life itself: simple in appearance and full of turns, where balance does not always conform to expectations. The form is that of jazz: the sound of a piano, a double bass, and drums; no affectation, no synthesizers; a vibrating base, both simple and immediate... A timeless form that will not overshadow content. And who better to support the project than Karim Ziad, world renowned master of drums, and the seasoned double bass player Chris Jennings?
In a troubled and hesitant world, music that is here both sober and complex naturally takes on political meaning, creating an opening and a space where rhythms live and breathe alongside each other, just as people do. At a time when life is increasingly contained within walls, this music claims the right to simply bring together such spaces and make them live in unison. Music is space, and whatever the metrics, what counts is confluence and unity. All is one.