¡ Adios Toledo ! is the name of a dream collaboration by jazz pianist and composer Julien Grassen Barbe. For this new project with multiple resonances, he draws on the musical traditions of India and the liturgy of the Jewish-Portuguese communities of southwestern France, the land of his childhood. AfterLoup vert (1), a critically acclaimed debut album, Julien Grassen Barbe has surrounded himself with three instrumentalists, soloists, and improvisers. Sitarist and surbahar specialist Denis Teste loves hybrid situations. A disciple of Pandit Kushal Das, grand master of the Hindustani repertoire and himself a disciple of Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan, he brings to the ensemble the spirituality of ragas and a deep, resonant voice. Ciro Montanari plays the role of rhythm section on the tablas. A collaborator of Jordi Savall and Efrén Lopez, he is a student of Pandit Shankar Chatterjee. A percussionist with a passion for the Middle East and the Mediterranean, he is above all a specialist in India. Jazz guitarist Misja Fitzgerald Michel navigates between electric and acoustic landscapes. A musician with multiple influences, trained by Jim Hall and John Abercrombie, and a stage companion of Ravi Coltrane, Chris Potter, and Mark Turner, he deftly shifts melodies that come and go from one continent to another. Indian sacred pieces, jazz, and synagogue songs are three worlds, three fertile playgrounds where the art of improvisation flourishes. From Bayonne and Bordeaux, via Calcutta, Barcelona, Porto, and Jerusalem, the quartet led by Julien Grassen Barbe, keyboardist, composer, and ethnomusicologist (2), draws on this rich and inspiring material to create a dozen original pieces woven together like the blue and white threads of a prayer shawl. A poetic journey of rare depth, paying homage to Garcia da Orta, an 18th-century Sephardic doctor who, fleeing the fires of the Inquisition, found refuge in Goa, a Portuguese colony on the west coast of India.

(1)Loup Vert was released in 2023 on the HIDD label – L’Histoire Inconnue Du Disque
(2) Several field studies conducted at the university as part of his research led him to discover the songs that gave rise to the project.