L'alchimiste

This is an album that’s hard to categorise but very easy to enjoy. Musical polymath Jean-François Zygel—pianist, improviser, composer, teacher, broadcaster—plays his own new accompaniments to a host of well-known chansons sung by their original performers, including Brigitte, Julien Doré, Renaud and Véronique Sanson. Zygel’s classical training—he launched the discipline of improvisation at the piano at Conservatoire de Paris—means that he’s a wonderfully subtle pianist and pulls off this unusual sort of “reverse karaoke” with resounding success.