Tom Bourgeois wants to “make the music of Lili Boulanger resonate”

Dominique Simonet paints a portrait of Tom Bourgeois

A musician from Lyon, he has reworked the French composer's impressionist work for jazz quartet. Between composition and improvisation, Tom Bourgeois aims for timelessness.

Is it a coincidence? Not really, if we consider the encounter, beyond time and space, between the Lyon saxophonist Tom Bourgeois and the composer Lili Boulanger. Marie Juliette Olga – known as Lili – Boulanger (1893-1918) was the first woman to win the Prix de Rome with her cantata “Faust et Hélène”. That was in 1913, when she was 19 years old. One day, a friend – “with whom we exchange gems” – played Tom a piece by Lili in which he discovered “chords that she uses and I use too. I had a flash of inspiration!”

Still amazed at “being connected to people we don't know, even though we have things in common,” the saxophonist and bass clarinetist put together the “Lili” project, with which he is currently on tour. On soprano and tenor saxophone, as well as bass clarinet, he revisits the world of the composer born ninety-five years before him, accompanied by Alex Koo (piano), Fil Caporali (double bass), and Théo Lanau (drums).

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