Prima Kanta: Rebecca Féron’s electro-acoustic harp, Frédéric Schadoroff synthesizers and piano, Arnaud Bonnet violin, Laurent Rochelle, sax soprano. Photo: Recording the In Purple Time. Source

Article publié dans le cadre du projet ArtHeals. Nos autres articles en français sont disponibles ici.

the story behind

How PRIMA KANTA Was Born

PRIMA KANTA was conceived by composer, saxophonist and clarinettist Laurent Rochelle around 2019 as a distinct musical project exploring minimalism, improvisation and expanded chamber-jazz forms.

The ensemble did not originate from a single photo-concert or site-specific event in the Pyrenees. Rather, its music was developed independently and later intersected with visual and photographic collaborations, including a Pyrenees-related photo-concert that became one of its early presentation contexts.

PRIMA KANTA first took full album form with 7 Variations on the Tao (2021), a sextet recording rooted in meditative structures and collective composition.

The project has since evolved organically, leading to In a Purple Time, where the ensemble appears as a quartet, deepening its sonic and poetic language.

---

We are especially happy to share this review of In a Purple Time, the latest album by PRIMA KANTA, led by our MusicHeals partner Laurent Rochelle.

Listening to In a Purple Time is best done with closed eyes: it is a quiet, luminous journey inward, rich in nuance, colour and breath.

Interview de Laurent Rochelle à l’occasion de la résidence de Prima Kanta à Millau. Résidence de création organisée dans le cadre des résidences Occijazz, en partenariat avec Jazz à Junas, le Théâtre de la Maison du Peuple et le Département de l’Aveyron.

And Today, 22.01.2026

a new French-language review was published by Webzine Rythmes Croisés, written by Stéphane Fougère — a thoughtful, generous text we truly enjoyed reading.

Congratulations to the author, the editorial team, and to PRIMA KANTA for this beautiful work.

We are now happy to present the review in English, with Hungarian and Romanian versions also available soon, so that this music can travel further and meet new listeners.

We sincerely hope that, following Saxicola Rubi later this September, we will soon be able to welcome PRIMA KANTA as well—and that this music will find its way to Hungary, too.

A special note:

Laurent Rochelle released four albums in 2025, and is currently working on a February 15 surprise, for which we will soon be sharing behind-the-scenes insights in english too.

Stay close.
Follow the artists, the writers, and the music.
This is a space for listening — slowly, attentively, together.

Edit Gergely & Arena Minda,

Magánterület — privaRtproperty (since 2002)

[Exclusive][Laurent Rochelle] „ROMANIA, TRANSYLVANIA, SERBIA: AN UNKNOWN AND GENTLY WILD LAND”

About Rythmes Croisés

Rythmes Croisés is an independent webzine dedicated to “Musiques de traverses et de traditions” — a broad musical landscape that brings together evolving traditional music, avant-garde sounds, innovative jazz, world music, and progressive forms beyond stylistic boundaries.

Created by an association of the same name, the webzine unites the content of the former ETHNOTEMPOS and TRAVERSES publications, offering in-depth articles, interviews, album reviews, brief news, concert and festival announcements, and photo essays that celebrate music as a living, cross-cultural exploration.

Run by a passionate volunteer editorial team, Rythmes Croisés seeks to share and discover a wide range of musical expressions — from evolving tradition to avant-garde innovation — without confining itself to narrow genre categories.

Visit and explore: rythmes-croises.org

Gergely Edit

---

New Publication

PRIMA KANTA – In a Purple Time
(Linoleum Records / Rewind)

 

We first discovered PRIMA KANTA in 2021 with the release of their debut album 7 Variations on the Tao   —a project founded by composer, saxophonist and clarinettist Laurent Rochelle, alongside its non-identical sibling, OKIDOKI QUARTET.

Four years later, PRIMA KANTA returns with their second album, In a Purple Time, subtly reshaped: the original sextet has evolved into a quartet.
This instrumental “lightening” does not signal a lighter music—on the contrary. As with 7 Variations on the Tao, the ensemble continues to explore a refined, impressionistic lyricism, rich in color and nuance.

Reassuringly, PRIMA KANTA’s music remains as vibrant and multifaceted as ever, despite the apparent risk of chromatic uniformity suggested by the album’s title.

---

PRIMA KANTA –

In a Purple Time

 

January 22, 2026
by Stéphane Fougère
Chroniques
avant-garde • jazz • minimalism • chamber music

We first encountered PRIMA KANTA in 2021, with the release of its debut album 7 Variations on the Tao. The ensemble — founded by composer, saxophonist and clarinettist Laurent Rochelle—appeared as the non-identical sibling of the OKIDOKI QUARTET, sharing lineage without mirroring form.

Four years later, PRIMA KANTA returns with its second album, In a Purple Time, having undergone a subtle but telling transformation: the original sextet has been distilled into a quartet.

This instrumental “slimming down” does not imply a lighter musical substance. The earlier 7 Variations on the Tao already leaned toward a refined, impressionistic lyricism — velvety, nuanced, and carefully shaded. Reassuringly, In a Purple Time remains just as richly colored and multifaceted, despite the risk of chromatic uniformity suggested by its title.

If Laurent Rochelle’s “primal cry” (the literal meaning of prima kanta) now shifts away from Taoist philosophy toward a more painterly meditation on a slice of time tinged in purplish red, it is not to evoke Spielbergian cinema or the Mediterranean antiquity echoed in ecclesiastical vestments.

Rather, it explores the poetic potential of purple itself — a color that famously resists monochrome classification.

As with the previous album, listeners should not expect a uniform palette, but instead a refined “boudoir jazz” soundscape unfolding through subtle climatic shifts and tonal variety.

The music draws inspiration from the delicately etched minimalist arabesques of Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Moondog, and Philip Glass, while maintaining a strong inclination toward improvisation.

PRIMA KANTA continues to stand out through the chromatic singularity of its instrumentation. Rebecca Féron’s electro-acoustic harp, Frédéric Schadoroff’s synthesizers and piano, and Arnaud Bonnet’s violin engage in constant dialogue with Laurent Rochelle’s clarinets, soprano saxophone, and balafon.

Together, they promise a musical world of multiple harmonic and timbral metamorphoses —arrangements once again shaped through collective work.

Percussion, previously handled by Juliette Carlier, has not entirely vanished. Two compositions are supported by the guest percussionist Loïc Schild, a former collaborator of Rochelle in MONKOMAROK and recently involved in Paysages du temps. And while Fanny Roz is no longer present, the human voice has not disappeared from this purplish temporal landscape: the vocal textures of Féron, Schadoroff, and Bonnet intermittently weave into the instrumental moiré, amplifying — when needed —

the music’s cinematic and visionary power.

Against the frozen monochromes of everyday existence, In a Purple Time offers a bouquet of eleven pieces shimmering with dreamlike variegation, fluid contours, and undulating blooms. The album propels us Up There, into a Beyond the Mists bathed in Dark Light, where white “Sources” (White Springs), adorned À fleur de Lys, project their mirages in a Perpetual Round,

inviting us to inhabit — fully and successively — one purple moment after another.

At its core, PRIMA KANTA unfolds a kind of calendar mapping the four seasons of the soul, along with the sensations, impressions, and emotions attached to each. There is a particular fondness for the in-between seasons — those liminal intervals where reverie balances on a wire, only to leap suddenly onto another.

The emotional spectrum here is remarkably elastic.

One wanders, skips, smiles, contemplates, doubts, shivers, grinds, panics, slips, capsizes, and marvels — depending on whether one clings to a melodic motif, catches a chord mid-flight, yields to a harmonic combination, follows a discreet solo drift, wraps oneself in atmospheric textures, loses footing in noisier terrain, regains orientation through rhythmic hypnosis, screams silently, or falls quiet amid resonant echoes.

These purple-tinted moments generated by PRIMA KANTA act as resonators capable of unlocking listening channels clogged by the random brutalities of the world.

In their place, they release the emancipatory dust of dreams — blown by notes wrapped in magical pulsations.

Stéphane Fougère

Site Prima Kanta

---

a Prima Kanta-történet:

és az új album: in purple time

Prima Kanta: Rebecca Féron elektroakusztikus hárfája, Frédéric Schadoroff szintetizátorok és zongora, Arnaud Bonnet hegedű, Laurent Rochelle szopránszaxofon. Fotó: az In Purple Time felvétele. Forrás

Hogyan született meg a PRIMA KANTA

PRIMA KANTA Laurent Rochelle zeneszerző, szaxofonos és klarinétos kezdeményezéseként született meg 2019 körül, önálló zenei projektként. A minimalizmus, az improvizáció és a kamara-jazz feltérképezésére vállalkozik.

Zenéjük önállóan formálódott, és később kapcsolódott vizuális és fotográfiai együttműködésekhez is – köztük egy, a Pireneusokhoz kapcsolódó fotókoncerthez.

A PRIMA KANTA első saját albuma a 7 Variations on the Tao (2021) volt, egy szextettfelvétel, amely meditatív struktúrákra és kollektív kompozícióra épül.

A projekt azóta organikusan fejlődött tovább, a 2025-ben megjelent In a Purple Time albumhoz, ahol az együttes immár kvartettként jelenik meg, tovább mélyítve hangzásbeli és költői nyelvét.

---

Az alábbiakban magyar nyelven is megosztjuk a In a Purple Time című albumról szóló kritikát, amellyel szeretnénk, hogy ez a rendkívüli zene Erdélyben vagy Romániában, és Magyarországon is ismertté váljék – szerves része annak a zenei világnak, amelyet a Magánterület #MusicHeals partnereként nagy örömünkre idekapcsolódó Laurent Rochelle zeneszerző-előadóművész és producer teremtett meg együtteseivel, köztük a PRIMA KANTA kiváló zenészeivel.

Az In a Purple Time hallgatása leginkább csukott szemmel ajánlott: csendes, fénylő belső utazás, amely gazdag árnyalatokban, színekben és lélegzetben.

Laurent Rochelle interjúja a Prima Kanta millau-i rezidenciája alkalmából készült. Ebben arról beszél Laurent: ha 4 szóban kellene jellemeznie a PRIMA KANTÁ-t, akkor ez a  négy szó az együttes tagjainak neve.

2026.01.22-én egy francia nyelvű kritika jelent meg a Rythmes Croisés webzine-ben, Stéphane Fougère főszerkesztő tollából.

Laurent Rochelle 2025-ben négy albumot adott ki, és jelenleg egy február 15-i meglepetésen dolgozik, amelyhez hamarosan több infót is hozunk.

Maradjatok közelben.

Gergely Edit & Arena Minda,

---

Új publikáció

PRIMA KANTA – In a Purple Time
(Linoleum Records / Rewind)

 

A PRIMA KANTA zenéjével először 2021-ben találkoztunk, a debütáló albumuk, a 7 Variations on the Tao megjelenésekor — ez a projekt Laurent Rochelle zeneszerző, szaxofonos és klarinétos kezdeményezésére jött létre, a nem azonos „testvérprojekt”, az OKIDOKI QUARTET mellett.

Négy évvel később a PRIMA KANTA a második albummal tér vissza, az In a Purple Time-mal, finoman átalakítva: az eredeti szextett kvartetté formálódott.
Ez a hangszeres „könnyítés” azonban nem jelent könnyebb zenét — épp ellenkezőleg. Ahogy a 7 Variations on the Tao esetében is, az együttes továbbra is egy kifinomult, impresszionisztikus líraiságot kutat, amely gazdag színekben és árnyalatokban.

Megnyugtató módon a PRIMA KANTA zenéje továbbra is ugyanolyan vibráló és sokarcú, mint korábban, annak ellenére, hogy az album címe látszólag a kromatikus egyneműség kockázatát sugallja.

---

PRIMA KANTA –

In a Purple Time

 

2026. január 22.
írta: Stéphane Fougère
Krónikák
avantgárd • jazz • minimalizmus • kamarazene

A PRIMA KANTA együttesével először 2021-ben találkoztunk, a debütáló album, a 7 Variations on the Tao megjelenésekor. Az együttes — amelyet Laurent Rochelle zeneszerző, szaxofonos és klarinétos alapított — az OKIDOKI QUARTET nem_

Magánterület — privaRtproperty (2002 óta)