Jean-Louis Marchand / Delphine Baudet: Requiem For Danny

An opera for radio by Jean-Louis Marchand for big band, slam narrator and sound creation, based on the novel The Big Nowhere by James Ellroy. New Year's Eve 1950: jazz band brass sections blaring from the entrances to each club in the City of Angels. Sin City, Crime Boulevard, Los Angeles wailing with cop sirens at every

intersection. Strings of investigating detectives on every corner, in raincoats and sunglasses, puffing cigarettes. The stage is set. Welcome to The Big Nowhere by James Ellroy, integral part of the Los Angeles Quartet (along with The Black Dahlia, L. A. Confidential and White Jazz), four noir fiction cult novels by the American author.

Clarinetist Jean-Louis Marchand's Franco-Belgian big band epouses the twists and turns, the rhythm, and perfectly recaptures the seamy atmosphere, rendered even more effective by incorporationg live urban sounds. Slammer Eli Finberg incarnates Malcolm Considine, Dudley Smith, Buzz Meeks, Danny Upshaw, the flamboyant characters of Ellroy's novel. Carrying their voices with power and confounding realism, he becomes a remarkable narrator of a mythical epoch and city, still far from having revealed all its secrets.