It's surprising, to say the least. An engineer who's also a professor and researcher at Montreal's École Polytechnique launches... a jazz CD?

"It's a question of interest and time management," Mr. Cardinal says modestly, although -- despite the demands of a full-on scientific career -- he still finds three hours a day to practice guitar, write songs, perform, create his own production company and release a first album, Djangology, with the band Zingaro.

For nearly 20 years, Mr. Cardinal and Ronald De Gray, the two Montréal guitarists who founded Zingaro, have played music that's strongly influenced, not only by the incomparable Reinhardt, but also by the greats of bebop: Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis. Djangology, launched in May 2005 at the Lion d'Or club, offers up original interpretations and compositions. Mr. Cardinal himself is the author of three new tracks. Excerpts from the album can be heard on the Zingaro Web site.

Beyond purely musical concerns, Djangology presented Mr. Cardinal with various technical and financial challenges. He put his electrical and electronic engineering knowledge to good use by setting up his own recording studio and producing Zingaro's first album independently. Simply put, the results are astonishing, the sound quality remarkable.

While engineering interests currently take up a large part of Mr. Cardinal's life, jazz was indisputably his first love. A self-taught musician, he first picked up a guitar at age 10. His music-loving mother filled the family home with the infectious sounds of swing, to which the young Christian would try to play along. Working as an electronics technician in his 20s, he seriously considered taking up music professionally. But the call of science was stronger. Completing first his bachelor's then his master's degree at École de technologie supérieure, in 1994 he began his PhD at École Polytechnique under Professor David Haccoun. His thesis on the iterative threshold decoding of convolutional self doubly-orthogonal codes proved fertile ground for future work. After his doctorate, Mr. Cardinal set about tackling the practical aspects of the project and pushed research in the field even further by developing new theoretical approaches. He started his academic career as a research associate before becoming an associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering in 2003. Deeply interested in telecommunications, today Mr. Cardinal shares his knowledge with electrical engineering students through two courses, Télécommunications 2 and Analyse des signaux.

A note to jazz lovers: you can catch Zingaro at Café In Vivo on October 8, 2005. Messrs. Cardinal and De Grey are also likely to appear at the 2006 Festival international de Jazz de Montréal.

Distribution for Djangology is currently in the planning stages. Between now and the album's appearance in the music stores, copies of Djangology can be obtained from Mr. Cardinal or the Zingaro Web site.

For updates on the band, information on upcoming concerts and musical excerpts from Djangology, visit the Zingaro Web site at http://www.zingaro-montreal.com

Djangology
Zingaro
Christian Cardinal and Ronald De Gray, guitar; Bernard Leblanc, bass; Nathalie Bonin, violin
2005 Productions Zingaro-Montréal