小女孩藍調～妮娜．席夢歌曲集 Little Girl Blue From Nina Simone

"There is one thing I am sure of: she moves you and enchants you beyond belief. But then we all know that. What I also know is that her voice, and her song, go with her alone to a place from which none of us return unscathed. What I do not know is the space she is in when suddenly I hear a Bach chorale or a Monteverdi madrigal. Allusions that typically she seems to keep tucked away and hidden deep in her songs. Another mystery to me is where she is in those moments of seeming absence, when, seated at the harpsichord, she plays something that might be Couperin… keyboard and voice seemingly floating in from disconnected worlds, seeking each other, over and over, until, ultimately they are reunited by the simple melody of a nursery rhyme. Then there are those moments of escape when she hurls herself at her keyboard and, like a tidal wave of harmony, sweeps everything away. As though her song has displaced, in one movement, all the incurable pain, anger and loneliness. All hers. All ours, too. Leaving us no choice. So what is this place? Is it the place she comes from, the place she returns to? A place that goes back beyond her classical studies to where she first heard the church music of her childhood? Where her desire was born? The only place capable of reconciling her love of music with her underlying anger, rebellion, and muted pain? What I do know is that it is her secret. I have dived deep into her repertory, her arrangements, her harmonic universe and her story too. This project is about offering her the voice of my cello, supported and accompanied by the multi-faceted musicianship of Bruno Fontaine, and the infinite poetry of Laurent Kraif’s sounds. Perhaps if I abandon myself to her, she will take me to the secret links between her and the composers she loved above all else. -- Sonia Wieder-Atherton"