Saiyuki trio

"Nobody plays guitar like him! The phrase still rings true today, as demonstrated by his latest release for the ACT label, Saiyuki. This renowned Parisian musician never ceases to unfold new sonic universes to amaze us, and it's all the more remarkable given that he's already one of the jazz world's greatest explorers of sound, whose imagination is constantly on the move in search of new alliances. Saiyuki is openly a journey. A journey from East to West and vice versa, in an "Asia without borders", to use Nguyên Lê's own words. The trio he forms with Japanese koto player Mieko Miyazaki and tabla virtuoso Prabhu Edouard embark on a musical silk road that links the various worlds of this continent.

Nguyên Lê has borrowed the title of his album from the famous sixteenth-century novel written by the Chinese poet Wu Cheng'en (in French, Le voyage en Occident, or sometimes Le roi des singes), which recounts the wanderings of a monk to the Western paradise we now call India. For the guitarist-explorer, this literary expedition represents a fascinating point of departure. Vietnam, India and Japan - the respective homelands of the members of the trio - mark the points of a magical triangle where sounds come together to create new forms, resulting in the scintillating fusion of three idiosyncratic idiosyncrasies.