Nguyên Lê & Ngô Hồng Quang feat. Paolo Fresu – Hà Nội Duo (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Nguyên Lê & Ngô Hồng Quang feat. Paolo Fresu – Hà Nội Duo (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 58:16 minutes | 1,01 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ACT Music

Nguyên Lê’s collaborates with vocalist Ngô Hồng Quang on Hà Nội Duo, an apparent study in contrasts as the two Vietnamese artists could not have had more different upbringings and musical education. And yet they found they had common goals, to express and share the soul of Vietnam with the wider world, bringing together the roots and the future of Vietnamese music. They each contribute three original songs to the album, rounded out by four traditional numbers. The duo is joined on various tracks by trumpeter Paolo Fresu, koto player Mieko Miyazaki and tabla player Prabhu Edouard.

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Nguyên Lê – Songs of Freedom (2011) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Nguyên Lê – Songs of Freedom (2011)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:10:26 minutes | 800 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ACT Music

A collection of his favourite songs of freedom: Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song” sits alongside hits from Led Zeppelin, Janis Joplin, Stevie Wonder, Eric Clapton and the Beatles, whose “Eleanor Rigby” and “Come Together” frame the album. The French-Vietnamese guitarist Nguyên Lê proves, like no other musician, that globalisation doesn’t always have to mean cultural homogenisation but that it can also create something new with its own quality. Since he became the first exclusive ACT artist in 1993, after “Jazzpana”, he has developed, fully in the sense of the equally cosmopolitan thinking label founder Siggi Loch, to become a great ‘music ethnologist’ in jazz. There is hardly any music region with its styles, characteristics and exceptional representatives which has not awakened his interest and which he hasn’t transformed into one of his ever self-enclosed cultural puzzles. Particularly on the four ACT albums released so far with the enchanting singer Huong Thanh, he has dedicated himself to Vietnamese stories as well as Far Eastern sounds (“Saiyuki”, ACT 9483-2) and the Maghreb (“Maghreb & Friends”, ACT 9261-2) and, in the pioneering Trio E_L_B with Peter Erskine and Michel Benita, he reinterpreted the classic trio format in jazz.

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Nguyên Lê – Overseas (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Nguyên Lê – Overseas (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 50:26 minutes | 962 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ACT Music

Nguyên Lê’s “Overseas” – the great guitarist brings jazz, traditional Vietnamese music and hip-hop to the music for “Cirque-Nouveau”.

“Overseas” stems from an interdisciplinary performance project combining dance, acrobatics and music. “Cirque-Nouveau”, conceived and directed by Tuan Le, whose other credits include work as lead choreographer for Cirque du Soleil, is an artistic reflection on the current zeitgeist of Vietnam, a country in which traditional lifestyles become disoriented through rapid modernisation, especially in the big cities. Nguyên Lê has written the music for it, a mix of jazz, traditional Vietnamese music and hip-hop; “Overseas”, from ACT is the soundtrack for this compelling vision of change and flux.

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Nguyên Lê – Celebrating the Dark Side of the Moon (2014) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Nguyên Lê – Celebrating the Dark Side of the Moon (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 58:50 minutes | 1,16 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ACT Music

Nguyên Lê is a magician; his art reveals itself not only in his own compositions but also in his celebrations of the music of the past, where his approach to the latter resembles sculptures made of new clay. Remember Purple, his tribute to Jimi Hendrix, or more recently his Songs Of Freedom and its evocations of rock’s greatest moments. He’s a flamboyant guitarist and, while he shows courteous deference to his source material, he has always expressed the full diversity of an imaginary world engendered by his own history, that of a nomad, self-taught virtuoso: his music feeds on influences embracing all continents, and is painted with colours drawn from jazz, rock, and a kind of world fusion permeated with light. Celebrating The Dark Side Of The Moon demonstrates that the imagination of Nguyên Lê has indeed risen to power; it is no simple tribute to a record which made history. It fervently expresses the re-creation exempt from all imitation of a score which you can hear in filigree. Lê produced and arranged the album, and adds five tracks of his own, interspersing the Pink Floyd material. Korean singing sensation Youn Sun Nah adds dramatic vocals and Michael Gibbs provides the orchestration.

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NES, Black String, Majid Bekkas, Nguyên Lê – Jazz at Berlin Philharmonic X: East – West (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

NES, Black String, Majid Bekkas, Nguyên Lê – Jazz at Berlin Philharmonic X: East – West (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 47:28 minutes | 574 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ACT Music

‘East meets West’ was the central theme in the life of Nesuhi Ertegün (1917-1989). He grew up as the son of the Turkish Ambassador in Washington, and Nesuhi himself was to become an ambassador too: one of the most important producers and advocates that jazz has ever had. On the 30th anniversary of his death, Jazz at Berlin Philharmonic curator Siggi Loch dedicated an evening to commemorating this friend and mentor who had been like a father to him. For Nesuhi, jazz had no borders; this concert was a posthumous validation of the far-sightedness of that vision.

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Nguyên Lê – Silk and Sand (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Nguyên Lê – Silk and Sand (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 48:51 minutes | 935 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ACT Music

After adventures in the most diverse formations and musical styles, World jazz icon Nguyên Lê returns to the trio format with which he once founded his international career. Together with the Canadian Chris Jennings, one of the most sought-after bassists on both sides of the Atlantic. And the Moroccan percussionist Rhani Krija, whose filigree, colourful grooves have already enriched the music of stars like Sting, Keziah Jones or Dominic Miller.

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