Huong Thanh & Nguyên Lê - Fragile Beauty (2008)

Fragile Beauty isn't the first time that singer Huong Thanh and guitarist Nguyên Lê—both Vietnamese-born, Paris-based—have worked together, but it is the first time they've shared the bill. Thanh has released three other ACT albums on which Lê produced, arranged and performed, and she's appeared on two of Lê's own discs—Maghreb & Friends (ACT, 1998) and the particularly stunning Tales from Viêt-Nam (ACT, 1997). Every one of these albums leads inevitably to Fragile Beauty, an album largely consisting of thoughtfully arranged traditional songs, but with some newly written material that sounds both as timeless and contemporary as the Vietnamese material Lê has arranged.

Call it world music, world jazz or whatever label needs to be applied to give it context; the title of Fragile Beauty says it all. While there are songs propelled forward by a wealth of percussion—and, on “The Swallows' Bridge,” by Karim Ziad's drum kit, which kicks in half-way through, locking in tightly with bassist Etienne Mbappé for a groove more Afrobeat than Oriental—there's a pervasive sense of delicacy and spare beauty. Despite the cultural source of the material, the preponderance of percussion instruments from around the globe, electric guitars, programming and sampling make this music of a global nature, with sophisticated harmonic elements pulled from (but not in) the jazz tradition, some of Lê's textures fusion- like (but his playing rarely approaching it) and guest trumpeter/flugenhornist Paolo Fresu's harmonized playing on “Swallows' Bridge” referencing Nu Jazz without actually being it.

1. (00:03:48) Huong Thanh & Nguyen Le - Drifting on the Water
2. (00:05:58) Huong Thanh & Nguyen Le - Weaving && Awaiting
3. (00:03:40) Huong Thanh & Nguyen Le - Faithfulness
4. (00:04:22) Huong Thanh & Nguyen Le - Plantation Song
5. (00:05:04) Huong Thanh & Nguyen Le - The Five Calls of the Night
6. (00:05:13) Huong Thanh & Nguyen Le - Fragile Beauty
7. (00:03:18) Huong Thanh & Nguyen Le - Rowing the Sampan
8. (00:04:55) Huong Thanh & Nguyen Le - The Pavilion of Cristallized Azure
9. (00:04:19) Huong Thanh & Nguyen Le - At Dusk, from the West Balcony
10. (00:03:58) Huong Thanh & Nguyen Le - Go Cong Blues
11. (00:06:23) Huong Thanh & Nguyen Le - The Swallow'S Bridge
12. (00:07:19) Huong Thanh & Nguyen Le - Tales of the Mountain

Playing Time.........: 00:58:16
Total Size...........: 95,42 MB