Hommage à Alain Gerber

One of the more remarkable critics and writers on jazz who I’ve come across is the French novelist and broadcaster Alain Gerber. He presents the radio show Le jazz est un roman (“Jazz is a novel”) which features each weeknight on France Musiques. The show’s format allows M. Gerber to spend months at a time exploring the life and work of a single artist. Most of the spoken material is based closely on his ongoing series of biographies of great jazz musicians (Bird, Armstrong, Chet, among others…), and framed by an extensive selection from the musician’s discography.

A natural storyteller, Gerber has found a way to weave details of the (often tragic) lives of his chosen subject into a radio show that remains steadfastly about the music, without deification of the players. Under Gerber’s guidance, the careers of some of the music’s greatest lights become epic sagas on 52nd Street for which the soundtrack is their own recorded output.

When I was living in France a few years ago, Alain Gerber’s radio show became a welcome part of my daily routine. Here are a couple of tracks which will for me always link themselves back to winter evenings in my apartment in a small town huddled against the foothills of the Vosges...

Bill Evans - Displacement
From New Jazz Conceptions: Riverside OJC20 025-2 [Buy]

Keith Jarrett Trio - Poinciana
From Whisper Not: ECM 1724/25 [Buy]

Alain Gerber