Misja Fitzgerald Michel pays tribute to the magic of Nick Drake s music on this mostly instrumental album where Me shell Ndgeocello lends her voice and a few words to a song. A manner of saying that the voice of the Englishman is heard first and foremost in the notes and the rhythms he left to posterity. What Misja envies in Nick Drake is the musician and his spirit of invention, the incomparable beauty of his songs, the breadth of his language, the sophistication of his harmonies. The artist s glow rather than his soul s pain. It is only fair. But the Frenchman s interpretations offer much more than that : they are exactly on key. The acoustic guitar is at the core of a disc that is much more than just another guitar record. First because here and there, other influences can be heard. Like that of the barrier-breaking cellist Olivier Koundouno, the arranger and lighting technician Nicolas Repac or the songwriter Hugh Coltman. Then because Misja, far from the isolated ghetto of guitar music , chose to adventure onto the boundless fields of musicality alone. His aesthetic choices stem from that adventure, that is, quite simply, a yearning for poetry and sensation. This explains his escapades towards baroque music or blues or even those appropriate freedoms taken with the compositions, either explored in the full scope of their harmonic possibilities, or brought back to their quintessential expression. Thus, everywhere, this lively celebration of a spirit of adventure and openness, that brings together a composer and an interpret who are forty years apart, draws a common space in which the inspirations and aspirations of one and the other can come together and mingle. Thus is the shining and initiatory path taken by Misja Fitzgerald Michel, on an album that sheds new light on the work of Nick Drake as much as on his own expression.
