"Louise" is a remarkable album in which ferocious energy contrasts and co-exists happily with a much softer side. It's subtleties and joys emerge the more one listens. As a result, "Louise" gives us the closest insight yet into the character and the creative individuality of one of Europe's leading jazz musicians. "The best new thing that has happened in European jazz for a long time" (Le Monde), Emile Parisien has formed a top-flight American-European sextet for this album, his seventh as leader or co-leader on ACT. The band will be touring in 2022, the year which also marks the tenth anniversary of Parisien's first appearance on an ACT album. The saxophonist developed his strong sense of direction in music remarkably early: he was 10 years old when the news reached his family in Cahors that a new music school would be opening up roughly 200 kilometers away in Marciac. The youngster told his parents that this was the school he wanted to go to as a boarder... and so, with their support and approval, off he went. And it was through the school and the festival in Marciac that he received mentorship from some of the greats of North American jazz