Nguyen Le, a French guitarist of Vietnamese origin, is working on a jazz version for one of the world’s best-selling albums by legendary rock band Pink Floyd to mark 40 years of its release.

Le said the “The Dark Side of the Moon” remake will start in May and is expected to finish by the end of this year. He will work together with Siggi Loch, director of German recording company ACT that has been releasing Le’s works exclusively since 1994.

“Remaking this album is a big challenge to any artist. But it is an interesting job as well,” he said in a Tuoi Tre report.

The eighth studio album by the British progressive rock band was released on March 17, 1973 and was an immediate success, with themes including conflict, greed, the passage of time, and mental illness.

It topped the Billboard chart for one week, remaining in the chart for 741 weeks until 1988 and became Pink Floyd’s most successful album commercially, with around 50 million copies sold.

The remake will have Le playing guitar along jazz orchestra bands of North German Broadcasting in Hamburg, African jazz composer and conductor Michael Gibbs, British jazz and rock drummer Gary Husband and Italian jazz singer and composer Maria Pia De Vito.

“It will be a new inspiring adventure for both the artists involved and the audiences into a 40-year-old work,” Le said.

Pink Floyd was founded in 1965 and the four members reunited in 2005 for a performance at the global benefit concerts Live 8 held in the G8 countries and South Africa to promote poverty alleviation. Two of the band’s four original members, Syd Barret and Richard Wright, died in 2006 and 2008 respectively.

Nguyên Lê "Celebrating Jimmy Hendrix" - Little Wing