XAVIER BELIN piano
BAPTISTE POULAIN sax

The brainchild of saxophonist Baptiste Poulin and pianist Xavier Belin, Crossing is a duo influenced by legendary duos such as Kenny Barron and Stan Getz, Lee Konitz and Martial Solal, and Brad Mehldau and Joshua Redman. With a varied repertoire of standards and new creations, Crossing takes us on a musical journey where interaction, listening and creativity are at the heart of their play.
Crossing can be translated as the crossing of two roads or two ideas. The result of a crossing is always something new. Crossing is the meeting between Xavier’s highly syncopated, motivating and stable playing and Baptiste’s virtuoso, lyrical and moving playing. The crossing between the warm timbre of the saxophone and the round and percussive sound of the piano. A cross between the green memories of the Burgundy countryside and the bright, flowery landscapes of Martinique.
Winner of both the Audience Prize and the Jury Prize in the 2019 Golden Jazz Trophy competition (co-organised by Golden Eyes and Jazz En Nord), Xavier Belin is undoubtedly one of France’s most promising young pianists. He graduated top of his class in 2014 from the International Music Educator Of Paris (and also from the capital’s Pôle Supérieur de Musique), and in 2018 formed Pitakpi, a quartet strongly reminiscent of so-called ‘Afro-descendant’ music.
Baptiste, meanwhile, is a young composer and performer whose reputation was first established in his native Mâconnais, before he joined the Pôle Supérieur de Musique de Paris (directed by Jean-Charles Richard), where he made friends with Xavier. Now working with leading figures in French jazz (Franck Tortiller, Pierre de Bethmann, Éric Prost), he has played with Fred Morin’s ONJ, and created the hip-hop/New Orleans fanfare Take Off Brass Band.