Robert Cordier

A protean drummer, Robert Cordier succeeds, thanks to this recording, in eliminating the ambiguity anchored in this type of phenomenon. His long association with Dixieland or middle jazz orchestras has partially erased, in the minds of amateurs, his qualities as a drummer with a modernity generating this emulation aroused by freedom, and whose invention remains one of the privileged signals.

Attentive to the spells of contemporary drumming – from Philly Joe Jones to Roy Haynes – and from Max Roach to Tony Williams, Robert Cordier nonetheless remains faithful to the structures developed at the beginning of the century by Zutty Singleton, then Jo Jones, accompanied by close by the great white drummers such as Dave Tough or Gene Krupa. One of the characteristics of Cordier’s playing consists of exploiting the African rhythmic element, one of the ineradicable pivots of jazz.

Marc DANVAL