35 years of friendship, with occasional collaborations, and here I am, very proud to write these few lines and to have participated for a duet in this new opus, "Suds", by my great friend and sister Viktor Lazlo.

The first time we worked together was on a piece I had written with Pierre Van Dormael for her and the Count Basie Orchestra, "Hey Baby, Cool", arranged by Frank Foster. She then joined us for the recording of the album with James Baldwin, "A Lover's Question" in 1986, where her clear and precise voice sounded like the phrasing of a muted trumpet that takes the floor and has now accompanied us for decades.

Among his many significant encounters was that with Khalil Chahine in the early 90s, whose complicity resurfaced to deliver a luminous and strong, poignant and clear musical narrative, whose notes accompany the energy of his latest novels up to this unexpected counterpoint. Here we are several crossroads later, and all of Viktor's expression is situated at crossroads and in places as important and surprising as any other, whose very expression, in music as in literature, is the fruit of a profound reflection on his, our place in this world in all its mixed, profound and contradictory, upsetting but also joyful and sunny. "Suds" is the echo of this, a sung dance that keeps us in rhythm from the beginning to the end, thanks to Khalil Chahine's compositions and arrangements and to the hand-picked musicians, like the breath that calms us once the storm has passed.

David Linx