Magic Malik

As a new step in his experimentations, the flutist Malik Mezzadri carries on with XP-2 the work started on the album in two cds called 00-237 XP-1, extended with the 13 XP Song’s (thirteen popular French songs reviewed and clearly corrected). As “Etudes” around the composition form and architecture as well as around musical language, the XP (a generic term for “experiences”) enables the musician to enter the rhythmic, harmonic and melodic fields within formal constraints and to free himself from it, following other musicians’ inspiration.

He thus selected them so that they could bring in left spaces their ideas and personalities.

Members of the Orchestra around Malik Mezzadri: Sarah Murcia (bass), Or Solomon (keyboards), Maxime Zampieri (drums), Denis Guivarch (saxophone). Several guests have been also invited to join the band:Gilles Coronado (guitar), Dj Rebel (decks), Jean-Luc Lher (electric bass), Bo Wanderwerf (baritone and tenor saxophone), Steve Coleman (saxophone alto).

Malik Mezzadri is carrying on with the latter a relationship started a few years ago. They met during the Hague Festival in Holland.

Known and appreciated for his touch of spontaneity, Malik Messadri reveals with his XP’s another aspect of his musical personality. He had started to learn the flute in Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe. In 1986, he moved to Marseille and studied at the CNR (National Music School). In 1988, he was awarded a first prize. Within Human Spirit, Magik Malik is being revealed thanks to a singular inventiveness in different universes. In 1997, he published HW I Project. Three years later, in 2000, he signed his first solo album for Label Bleu: 69-96. 00237-XP 1 and 13 XP Song’s Book will respectively follow in 2001 and 2004. Since then, Malik Mezzadri multiplies encounters and collaborations in order to taste and discover various universes of his colleagues.

Curious and eager to learn more about music and its mysteries, he therefore reveals with his XP a much larger variety of facets than expected at the beginning of his career.

Presented in chronological order of their conception, the XP’s are followed by XP’s 2 on distinct modes. The opening “XP11” is developing on a nervous tempo in concentric circles.

The following XP’s are slower and let musicians follow each other in the movement.

Languor, relation to time, place for silence, sequences, unisons, chorus: the flutist also blends his sound in the collective to the profit of this new series of experimentations from an almost surgical viewpoint. “XP18” is extending over ten minutes, like a map drawn in touches. At the end of the album, “Fantaisie” suggests a breakaway towards a multicoloured melody.

A ghost title, built with fragments of other XP’s is hidden at the end. Other XP’s are already in gestation. A Hard XP around hard-bop is planned for the end of the year. But, because he needs to play, Magik Malik took recently part in sessions and/or concerts of the Cuban percussionist Anga Diaz, as well as of M, Troublemakers, Aka Moon, Octurne, Shogun, the guitarist Nelson Veras, the saxophonist Pierrick Pedron, the Dj Gilb-R and his Chateaux Fligh, Richard Zolfo and his I.T. Project. He keeps enriching his palette in the course of his encounters.

He therefore carries on with his adventures and the XP’s remain only one aspect of this character, since he does not wish to limit himself to one approach. “I like houses with open doors. For a nomad, they often constitute a beneficial refuge. But we must be able to get out, once we got inside”.

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