amg

What is a jazz band? At what point do four musicians, each with their own personal history, their own journey as listeners, instrumentalists, and improvisers, become an entity that transcends individuality and creates a sound together? For pianist Antoine Fleury, double bassist Anthony Jouravsky, drummer Mailo Rakotonanahary, and saxophonist Keïta Janota, this chemistry came together one evening in March 2022 on stage at Sunset, one of the legendary clubs on Rue des Lombards in Paris. Two months later, within the walls of the equally legendary Pigalle studio, AMG (the name the four musicians gave themselves) recorded together for the first time what would become their eponymous debut album, reissued in a revised and expanded form under the title AMG EXTENDED in December 2024, which was quickly praised by critics. 

From then on, the AMG quartet played most of the clubs in the french capital —the Duc des Lombards, the Baiser Salé, the 38Riv, La Gare, La Petite Halle... – winning every springboard competition they entered and casually imposing this acronym, borrowed from a musical theory developed by saxophonist and flutist Yusef Lateef, on the jazz microcosm. 

Precisely because AMG, in addition to being a gathering of gifted individuals, is a group, a sound, an energy, a spirit, a fire. Both rooted and modern, feverish and soothing in turn, AMG's music breaks with many of the clichés of the era: jazz, as approached and practiced by these twenty-somethings who cite the giants of modern jazz as well as their disciples of the new millennium and the young guard of French rap, is the music of the 21st century. And it doesn't need to be artificially crossover or designed to be listened to standing up to be relevant to the audience of 2025, who have long since dismissed the question of musical genres and understood the power and universal reach of instrumental music.