Baptiste Trotignon

NEW ALBUM (SEPTEMBRE 2026) : ART IS SIMPLE

Having brilliantly explored the world of British pop with *Brexit Music*, won two Victoires du Jazz awards with the live band PianoForte, and collaborated with the highly poetic Arthur Teboul, Baptiste Trotignon is back with his 25th album, *ART IS SIMPLE*, in which he showcases a creative vision imbued with serenity and elegance. Featuring a completely original repertoire—with no covers and entirely composed and created by the pianist himself—the album showcases the eclecticism that has become his musical hallmark over the years, as well as a sense of journey that takes us into a soundscape that is more cinematic and meditative than usual, stepping away for a moment from the paths of jazz and improvisation. A true turning point in his creative journey.

He is once again the best person to speak about the conception of this new album, which is being released on the Naïve label:

“I’ve always had a complex relationship with simplicity. Art is simple … After several albums in recent years centred on covers, I felt the urge to write a lot of music, and I had fun setting myself this rule: a maximum of one hour to compose each track. It helps you stay focused, avoid the temptation to overcomplicate the musical language, and above all, to trust your intuition, welcome ideas as they come with confidence, and stick to them! Achieving something simple but not simplistic, refined and accessible, whilst trying to remain elegant without being ‘shallow’… that’s a real challenge.

To bring this idea to life, I wanted there to be less improvisation than usual: the atmosphere is very peaceful, relaxed – often quite dreamy, in fact – and there’s quite a bit of a slow, lingering quality to the colours… To use classical music terms, the energy is clearly more ‘andante’ than ‘agitato’. There’s also more production work on ‘Art is simple’ – what’s known as ‘post-production’ in the trade – that is, the way we tweak the tracks once they’ve been recorded to mix, restructure and arrange the music, as is common practice in other genres but quite rare in jazz. In terms of inspiration, this album draws heavily on genres that do NOT fall into the ‘classical music’ category: chanson, folk and pop music, but also everything stemming from today’s nu-soul… All these genres also tend towards a form of simplicity most of the time, so inevitably there are a few touches of these styles in ‘Art is simple’.

I’m not sure that an artist absolutely has to be socially engaged and so on… But I firmly believe that the very fact of having chosen to be an artist IS already a commitment in itself. In a way, ‘Art is simple’ is also, in my own modest way, my way of participating in and responding personally to the challenges of the contemporary world as it is evolving today. This world is, after all, becoming very confusing – too complex, I think, and overloaded with too much information… and perhaps it’s about trying to protect oneself a little from all that, offering a form of resistance to it, and attempting to find a safe HAVEN if one doesn’t want to lose one’s way, by trying to lighten the load a little!”

Baptiste Trotignon , 2026