Two Bass Hits

Trio Léandre/Derome/Roger and Quartestski Does Prokofiev perform Montreal concerts

Trio Léandre/Derome/Roger

La Salle Rosa

Montreal March 25, 2008

Quartestski Does Prokofiev

Casa del Popolo

Montreal March 26, 2008

Bass set the pace in Montreal on two weeknights in late March. This was the result of Paris-based Joëlle Léandre performing as part of an ad-hoc trio in concert at converted social hall La Salle Rosa the night before local bassist, Pierre-Yves Martel, played across Boulevard St. Laurent at the more relaxed Casa del Popolo club, exhibiting the sort of genre-bursting freedom won for younger string players like himself by pioneers like Léandre, as his Quartestski Does Prokofiev extended its interpretations of the material on its eponymously named CD. The connection was even stronger, since the peripatetic Parisian, stopping off between gigs in New York and Paris actually played on Martel’s bass.

Many times at the Salle Rosa it seemed as if Léandre – described in promotional material as une grande dame de la musique improvisée – and who made a suitably tardy diva-like entrance after the other two had set up – was more involved in duo playing than cohesive trio work. This is understandable, however, since the uninhibited Frenchwoman approaches every musical challenge head-on, smacking her strings with her bow, slithering all over its body to spear illusive notes and often murmuring and chanting in a combination of French and invented language as she plays.

In contrast to Léandre’s maximal approach, the locals, percussionist Danielle Palardy Roger and saxophonist/flautist Jean Derome, although expansive as part of Quebec’s experimental Musique Actuelle scene were almost minimalists. It may depend on hitting the proper groove: Derome had only played once before with the bassist; and while Roger and Léandre recorded a duo disc that was in 1999.

Nonetheless, as the concert evolved, disparate pieces locked into place with the Québécois players taking more risks and bassist’s excesses harnassed. At one point Roger and Léandre indulged in a silent duet, the percussionist waves the yoke from one drum top in the air as the bassist responds with an equally unheard rapier-like air slice with her bow.

Moving among flute, contrabass flute, alto and baritone saxophones, Derome is anything but mute and frequently trades his instruments’ innate harmoniousness for dissonant cries. Romantic flute lines invariably give way to fripple percussiveness, while tongue slapping, bow bellowing and vibrato whoops and gasps characterize his saxophone strategy. Although Roger prefers tapping cymbals with her palms, scraping a ratchet with fingernails, drum stick buzzes on unattached cymbals and maraca shaking to gargantuan drum thumps by the finale the three build up to an Energy Music-styled admixture, driven in part by a descending blues line from Derome and thumping, spiccato strokes from Léandre. An encore is pure tension-relief with the reedist creating all sorts of mouth sounds from Bronx cheers to shrilling a slide whistle and a duck call.

No timbre was as rowdy the subsequent evening across the street, although drummer Isaiah Ceccarelli wasn’t averse to shaking a sound tree or producing doubled percussion by scraping a cow bell on his snare. Martel sometimes rubbed his palms and scrapped his fingernails on his bass’s wood when he wasn’t slapping its string sul tasto; trumpeter Gordon Allen produces melismatic heraldic cries or echoing plunger tones; while Phillipe Lauzier played a few choruses with a plumber’s helped screwed on top of his alto saxophone bell.

Maintaining the Prokofiev premise however meant that Lauzier used his soprano saxophone and bass clarinet to elaborate the composer’s themes for improvisation, with harmonic converge among his timbres and those of Allen often buoyed by perfectly formed arco bass lines. Ceccarelli’s distinctive press roll and modified march tempo was called into service as well. Many times during the performance the material appeared to be simultaneously faithful to the originals, rhythmically foot tapping and illuminated with avant-garde asides and expansions.

Whether the improvisation involved Lauzier buzzing colored air from his saxophone, striated tremolos from Allen or squeaks or smacks from Martel’s bass strings the heads were invariably re-capped. Of course the suspicion remained that the theme interpretation, whether it revolved around the creepy timbres tones heard in a haunted Charlie Chaplin-like walk may have originated more with Quartestski than Prokofiev.

--Ken Waxman

-- For CODA Issue 339

May 8, 2008

Joëlle Léandre & Kevin Norton

Winter in New York - 2006
Leo Records CD LR 499

Proving once again that the limitations of musical improvisation are only what can’t be imagined, French bassist Joëlle Léandre and American percussionist Kevin Norton combine for a live set that utilize every timbre of their respective instruments.

Norton finds unique and unexpected textures, rhythms and tones to whack, stroke, pulse and pop as he moves among standard drum kit, vibraphone, bells and other miscellaneous percussion during these eight variations on a theme. His occasional trans-oceanic collaborator, Léandre has revelled in similar meetings since the early 1980s. Strumming, bowing and thumping the heavy instrument’s strings and wood, plus scatting conspiratorially at times, the bassist’s command of double bass vocabulary in such that every percussion challenge is handed with aplomb.

Often shifting the tonal centre and sliding from staccato to stop-time in an instant, the two quickly establish an interlocking strategy. Should Norton pulse connective tremors with his vibes, then Léandre saws thick col legno lines. If she concentrates on

sul ponticello sweeps and sways, then he shakes bells, strikes cymbals and worries single tones half speed, causing an instantaneous double tempo of sways and spiccato vibrations. With Norton immediately able to utilize a variety of percussion tools – frequently to play one after another in quick succession – Léandre often pitches voluptuous sul tasto thrusts until a shrill single line partial is exposed, reverberating on its own until joined by the percussionist’s scrapes and scuffs.

A dialogue not a contest, the fervor and intensity with which the two bring to this meeting make this a Winter’s tale that often bears retelling.

-- Ken Waxman

-- For CODA Issue 336

December 4, 2007

Joëlle Léandre/Masahiko Satoh

Voyages
BJSP 0001

Joëlle Léandre/Pascal Contet

Freeway

Clean Feed CF080CD

Dissimilar keyboards and keyboardists provide the counterweight to French improviser Joëlle Léandre’s double bass on these duo CDs. Yet the most fascinating part of the performances is how Paris-based Léandre manages to subtly steer the playing of these veterans away from their regular comfort zone into a realm of Free Music, which is her raison d’être.

Voyages, for instance, is the second CD featuring the bassist plus Japanese pianist, composer and arranger Masahiko Satoh, who she first recorded with five years previously. Satoh, who has worked with musicians as different as fusion drummer Steve Gadd and experimental saxophonist Ned Rothenberg, is an accomplished professional who most commonly plays mainstream jazz, writes soundtracks and provides backing for pop/jazz singers.

Another reunion occurs on Freeway, recorded less than three weeks after the other CD. This set reunites French accordionist Pascal Contet with Léandre after a hiatus of more than a decade. Contet, who usually plays theatre and so-called serious music with conductors such as Pierre Boulez, adapts his chamber music ethos to improvised music. Léandre, whose initial notoriety came from interpreting the scores of composers such as John Cage and Giacinto Scelsi is comfortable with both notated and completely improvised sounds. She’s also an old hand at the duet format, having over the years partnered everyone from veterans such as British guitarist Derek Bailey and American saxophonist Steve Lacy to tyro improvisers. On these discs, she easily gets both keyboardists to pull their own weight when it comes to contributing to the overall sound picture.

Sharing eight “Voyages” with Satoh, for instance, her up-and-down string rappelling and multi-stopping often coaxes low-frequency pedaling and rondo-like arpeggios from the pianist. Should her sawing, sul ponticello lines turn even more abstract, then Satoh introduces delayed string patterns, percussive vibrations and hand knocks on the instrument’s external wood frame.

Elsewhere Satoh asserts himself with cross-handed, high-frequency chording and floating expansive lines, as well as crashing kinetic chords with bursting waterfalls of agitated notes. Thick, tremolo bowing from Léandre appears to bring out the classicist in Satoh and his legato attack includes sprightly andante cadences and single note romps.

Distinct duple patterns arise when the bassist not only thumps and slaps her strings, but also foot taps and harmonizes in verbal nonsense syllables along with her string manipulation. Expressive, these soprano-pitched mouth movements can be heard despite her dense bow strokes.

Vocalization is kept to a minimum however on Freeway. That is until “Freeway 10”, when a combination of Léandre’s verbal mumbles and sul tasto low-pitches from her bass help subvert the accordionist’s oceanic harmonic waves. Most of the time parlando is reserved for the 12 selections’ instrumental textures. Content’s squeeze box, with its history in chanson française and musette lists towards legato harmonies, so it’s Léandre staccato and tremolo manipulations that keep sentimentality from overwhelming the tunes. Despite this, Content’s preference for chamber music unveils many gentling, near pastoral themes. Then the bassist’s pedal point underpinning must guide him to break up those gentling harmonics with jagged keyboard trills.

On the eighth track for instance, trembling accordion timbres glance off widely spaced vibrating bass string partials, resulting is two broken octave melodies. This interface works most credibly here and elsewhere, when unhurried polyphony allows the striated lines to undulate and intersect, but never really catch one another. It leaves the abrasive contrast between the bellows and catgut as the defining notion.

With Léandre’s taut, sharp improvisations in fine fettle whether harsh and spiccato, or moderato and harmonic, and the duo partners manfully filling in the remaining spaces, both sessions are satisfying. Perhaps an inclination towards bellows rather than soundboards will draw the listener one way or the other.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Voyages: 1. Voyages 1 2. Voyages 2 3. Voyages 3 4.Voyages 4 5. Voyages 5 6. Voyages 6 7.Voyages 7 8. Voyages 8

Personnel: Voyages: Masahiko Satoh (piano) and Joëlle Léandre (bass)

Track Listing: Freeway 1. Freeway 1 2. Freeway2 3. Freeway 3. 4. Freeway 4 5. Freeway 5 6. Freeway 6 7. Freeway 7 8. Freeway 8 9. Freeway 9 10. Freeway 10. 11. Freeway 11 12. Freeway 12

Personnel: Freeway: Pascal Contet (accordion) and Joëlle Léandre (bass)

November 18, 2007

Joëlle Léandre/Pascal Contet

Freeway
Clean Feed CF080CD

Joëlle Léandre/Masahiko Satoh

Voyages

BJSP 0001

Dissimilar keyboards and keyboardists provide the counterweight to French improviser Joëlle Léandre’s double bass on these duo CDs. Yet the most fascinating part of the performances is how Paris-based Léandre manages to subtly steer the playing of these veterans away from their regular comfort zone into a realm of Free Music, which is her raison d’être.

Voyages, for instance, is the second CD featuring the bassist plus Japanese pianist, composer and arranger Masahiko Satoh, who she first recorded with five years previously. Satoh, who has worked with musicians as different as fusion drummer Steve Gadd and experimental saxophonist Ned Rothenberg, is an accomplished professional who most commonly plays mainstream jazz, writes soundtracks and provides backing for pop/jazz singers.

Another reunion occurs on Freeway, recorded less than three weeks after the other CD. This set reunites French accordionist Pascal Contet with Léandre after a hiatus of more than a decade. Contet, who usually plays theatre and so-called serious music with conductors such as Pierre Boulez, adapts his chamber music ethos to improvised music. Léandre, whose initial notoriety came from interpreting the scores of composers such as John Cage and Giacinto Scelsi is comfortable with both notated and completely improvised sounds. She’s also an old hand at the duet format, having over the years partnered everyone from veterans such as British guitarist Derek Bailey and American saxophonist Steve Lacy to tyro improvisers. On these discs, she easily gets both keyboardists to pull their own weight when it comes to contributing to the overall sound picture.

Sharing eight “Voyages” with Satoh, for instance, her up-and-down string rappelling and multi-stopping often coaxes low-frequency pedaling and rondo-like arpeggios from the pianist. Should her sawing, sul ponticello lines turn even more abstract, then Satoh introduces delayed string patterns, percussive vibrations and hand knocks on the instrument’s external wood frame.

Elsewhere Satoh asserts himself with cross-handed, high-frequency chording and floating expansive lines, as well as crashing kinetic chords with bursting waterfalls of agitated notes. Thick, tremolo bowing from Léandre appears to bring out the classicist in Satoh and his legato attack includes sprightly andante cadences and single note romps.

Distinct duple patterns arise when the bassist not only thumps and slaps her strings, but also foot taps and harmonizes in verbal nonsense syllables along with her string manipulation. Expressive, these soprano-pitched mouth movements can be heard despite her dense bow strokes.

Vocalization is kept to a minimum however on Freeway. That is until “Freeway 10”, when a combination of Léandre’s verbal mumbles and sul tasto low-pitches from her bass help subvert the accordionist’s oceanic harmonic waves. Most of the time parlando is reserved for the 12 selections’ instrumental textures. Content’s squeeze box, with its history in chanson française and musette lists towards legato harmonies, so it’s Léandre staccato and tremolo manipulations that keep sentimentality from overwhelming the tunes. Despite this, Content’s preference for chamber music unveils many gentling, near pastoral themes. Then the bassist’s pedal point underpinning must guide him to break up those gentling harmonics with jagged keyboard trills.

On the eighth track for instance, trembling accordion timbres glance off widely spaced vibrating bass string partials, resulting is two broken octave melodies. This interface works most credibly here and elsewhere, when unhurried polyphony allows the striated lines to undulate and intersect, but never really catch one another. It leaves the abrasive contrast between the bellows and catgut as the defining notion.

With Léandre’s taut, sharp improvisations in fine fettle whether harsh and spiccato, or moderato and harmonic, and the duo partners manfully filling in the remaining spaces, both sessions are satisfying. Perhaps an inclination towards bellows rather than soundboards will draw the listener one way or the other.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Voyages: 1. Voyages 1 2. Voyages 2 3. Voyages 3 4.Voyages 4 5. Voyages 5 6. Voyages 6 7.Voyages 7 8. Voyages 8

Personnel: Voyages: Masahiko Satoh (piano) and Joëlle Léandre (bass)

Track Listing: Freeway 1. Freeway 1 2. Freeway2 3. Freeway 3. 4. Freeway 4 5. Freeway 5 6. Freeway 6 7. Freeway 7 8. Freeway 8 9. Freeway 9 10. Freeway 10. 11. Freeway 11 12. Freeway 12

Personnel: Freeway: Pascal Contet (accordion) and Joëlle Léandre (bass)

November 18, 2007

Joëlle Léandre

At The Le Mans Jazz Festival
Leo CD LR 458/459

Versatile French bassist Joëlle Léandre can always be counted upon to be dependable in her contributions to any improvisation as well as flexible in her choice of musical partners.

Starting in the early 1980s, she has performed in Europe, Asia and North America, with improv masters, innovative Free players from different cultures and younger musicians who need more exposure. Recorded during one five-day period, this two-CD set showcases her playing in five different contexts with new and old collaborators and with predictably impressive results.

Interestingly enough, both duets here are with Americans – New York bassist William Parker and Bay area violinist India Cooke, both of whom she has recorded with in the past. Cooke who has played with originals like trombonist George Lewis and Sun Ra brings a certain willowy lyricism to her meeting. Warm, and broad, her fiddle strokes are expansive; she often constructs mini-themes while Léandre provides the technical ballast. Elsewhere, thick double stopping on the Frenchwoman’s part causes Cooke to pick away chromatically or squeeze out spiccato arco lines.

Often working in double counterpoint, the Parker meeting on the other hand, rebounds from technical to folkloric displays and back again. At points mutual multiphonics intersect polyrhythmically, and then split, with one bassist opting for shrill string glissandi and the other for basso, shuffle-bowed vibrations. Adding the instrumental sounds of a whistle to his string-stroking, Parker’s other improvisations move past Afro-American inferences so that the two together suggest the Pan-Asian textures of a pipa and a dizi.

Even more spectacular are the creation of two European aggregations constituted by players with whom Léandre works individually. The quartet completed by Italian trombonist Sebi Tramontana, Portuguese violinist Carlos Zingaro and German percussionist Paul Lovens is particularly noteworthy. Beyond Lovens’ unerring yet understated sense of time and Tramontana’s homage to early Jazz with gutbucket slurs, it’s Zingaro’s fiddling that defines the collaboration. More tremolo and definitely more formal than Cooke’s technique, his sweeping portamento, double-stopping and contrapuntal associations encourage the bassist to turn irregular string slaps into pedal- point ostinato. Coupled with Lovens’ pin-pointed cymbal maneuvers and intermittent drum patterns, this polyrhythmic interface ties the disparate parts into one pulsating, staccato affiliation.

Partnering another percussionist – Swiss Mark Nauseef who also plays electronics – and German trumpeter Markus Stockhausen, Léandre responds in a contradictory manner. Although both men have connections to contemporary so-called serious music – as does Léandre – her rubber-band-like vibrations and widely space drones guide the others closer to improvisation. Especially problematic are Stockhausen’s weedy muted notes that seem to reflect Miles Davis’ lyricism without his fire.

To counter this shortcoming, the bassist bows warmly and harmonically underneath his elongated grace notes. Stretching out legato patterns that are echoed by the ping of Nauseef’s gongs and the steady clicking and tapping of his electronics, she gets the brassman to slur plunger tones. Genially mocking his legato output, she uses thick string pops plus contrapuntal double stops and vocalization to turn the group improvisation outward.

Vocalization also figures into the remaining match-up with Léandre performing as part of the long-running Les Diaboliques trio with Swiss pianist Irène Schweizer and Scottish vocalist Maggie Nicols. Unfortunately, this didn’t seem to be one of the band’s better nights. Although the bassist’s col legno squeaks and wood-rending strokes plus the pianist’s sliding glissandi and deliberately raggy syncopation maintain momentum, it’s the singer’s mumbles, lilts and shrills that command centre stage.

Moving between pseudo-Scottish speaking-in-tongues and lyric soprano warbling, Nicols ranges all over the tunes without ever settling into the sort profound onomatopoeia she sometimes spontaneously creates in full flight. Neither Schweitzer’s theatrical low-frequency runs or Léandre’s sul ponticello swells and accompanying vocalization keeps the singer focused and away from stream-of-consciousness, chicken-clucking dialogue in English, French and Gaelic.

Except for these two tracks – which are isolated at the beginning of disc one and do have the virtue of interesting work from the pianist and bassist – the rest of At The Le Mans Jazz Festival is unreservedly prime Léandre. Any of the other performances speak to her versatility, inventiveness and flexibility.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Disc 1: 1. Meeting One 2. Meeting Two 3.Meeting Three 4.Meeting Four 5. Meeting Five Disc 2: 1. Just Now One 2. Just Now Two 3. Just Now Three 4. Just Now Four 5. Just Now Five 6. Just Now Six 7. Just Now Seven 8. Just Now Eight 9. Just Now Nine

Personnel: Les Diaboliques: Irène Schweizer (piano); Joëlle Léandre (bass) and Maggie Nicols (voice) [disc 1, tracks 1, 2]; Joëlle Léandre (bass) and William Parker (bass and whistle) [disc 1 tracks 3-5] India Cooke (violin) and Joëlle Léandre (bass) [disc 2 tracks 1-3] Markus Stockhausen (trumpet); Joëlle Léandre (bass) and Mark Nauseef (percussion and electronics) [disc 2 tracks 4, 5] Sebi Tramontana (trombone); Carlos Zingaro (violin); Joëlle Léandre (bass) and Paul Lovens (drums and percussion) [disc 2 tracks 6-9]

September 13, 2006

JOSEPHSON/LÉANDRE/SMITH/BLUME

Cruxes
Balance Point Acoustics bpa 010

By Ken Waxman

Despite appearances and personnel this isn’t an Old World-New World double bass face-off between a practiced French master and an American tyro, seconded by a representative of each continent.

Rather CRUXES is a document of Bochum, Germany-based percussionist Martin Blume’s visit to the Bay Area, where he improvised live and in-studio with one veteran of the European scene – French bassist Joëlle Léandre – plus bassist Damon Smith and Aurora Josephson’s voice.

Smith, whose work here is complementary rather than antagonistic to Léandre’s, has already improvised with some of the top EuroImprovisers, including German reedist Wolfgang Fuchs and British bass saxophonist Tony Bevan. Josephson has recorded in the company of Smith, Blume and British violinist Philipp Wachsmann. Blume’s collaborators have ranged from saxophonist Luc Houtkamp of the Netherlands to Belgium pianist Fred Van Hove; while Léandre cohorts stretch from the late American saxophonist Steve Lacy and Portuguese fiddler Carlos Zingaro to partners appropriate for this meeting – improvising vocalists Lauren Newton and Maggie Nichols.

Josephson doesn’t yet have the commanding vocal personality of those other two, and to be honest there is a certain sameness to her harmonic asides expressed on the disc’s 12 selections. Wordless, but not rhythmic scat, her warbling, near-lyric soprano tone insinuates itself into the crevices of these pieces. But while that takes place, her gullet responses ululate from bel canto smoothness to episodes of puppy dog-like panting, crone cackling and frightened child whimpers.

Not adverse to occasionally vocalizing herself, Léandre’s one extended foray into spitting and whispering Bedlam-like vocal interaction on “Siberia of the Mind” fits organically into this bass duet with Smith, as one bows sonorously and the other attacks the strings spiccato.

With Josephson’s peeping and squeaking soprano in-and-out of aural focus, the improvisational mode on most selections follows the pattern of the two bassists inventively improvising upfront, and the drummer commenting on, extending and accompanying the dual string actions. Bringing a wealth of rhythmic imagination to the session, Blume swathes his drum tops with subtle taps and fingertip brush strokes, dabbing not striking them.

He uses gentling cymbal resonation, rotating scratches and slapped tops to not upset the equilibrium when the vocalist introduces a mini-excursion into chimp cries and grunts. Conversely, on “Tableaux Imaginaires/Cadres Imaginaires”, a trio outing with Smith and Léandre, hardened smacks, rattled cymbals, blunt paradiddles and resonating stick rebounds is his snapping rejoinder to slashing tremolo stops and speedy bow pressure. As the bass duo works moderato, in broken chords that plug any spaces, the overall interaction produces wave forms that resemble vibrated flute lines.

Flinging timbres at one another that bring in most string nodes and pressure from the space near the tuning pegs down to just above the spike, Smith and Léandre knit a polyphonic tone blanket that takes in layering spiccato cross references, sul ponticello and sul tasto movements and straightforward double stopping.

The most spectacular version of the layered interaction occurs on the final more-than-19½-minute “Hodie Mihi, Cras Tibi!” but the patterns are set throughout. Pops, whorls and spirals from Blume’s percussion, constant and repetitive shuffle bowing and double stopping from the basses as well as echoing squeaks from Josephson complete the sound picture.

No contest, the crux of CRUXES is a meeting of minds, and a confirmation that improv thrives in Europe, in the United States and among veterans and near-veterans.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Ces Grésillantes Annés Cosmococciques (studio): 1. Risen like Venus from the Flatlands of Brooklyn 2. Imaginary Paintings/Imaginary Frames 3. Siberia of the Mind 4. The Elusive Basilisk 5. Scriabin the Derailer 6. Tanglefoot Flypaper 7. Napolean’s Favorite Wine (Gevrey-Chambertin) 8. Praxis Sizzling /Cosmococcic Years (live) 9. De Papier Tue-mouches 10. Un Soeur de Charité 11. Tableaux Imaginaires/Cadres Imaginaires 12. Hodie Mihi, Cras Tibi!

Personnel: Joëlle Léandre and Damon Smith (basses); Martin Blume (percussion); Aurora Josephson (voice)

August 14, 2006

QUARTET NOIR

Lugano
Victo cd 096

SCHLIPPENBACH/DUNMALL/ROGERS/BIANCO Vesuvius
SLAMCD 262

Serendipitously recorded eight days apart, these mixed Euro-American quartet CDs with similar instrumentation couldn’t be more different – and that statement encompasses a lot more than personnel or geography.

Matching one of the founders of German Free Jazz with three younger, London-based improvisers is VESUVIUS, an all-out recording session firmly in the Energy Music genre. LUGANO, which is described as “a suite in three movements”, is as much minimalism as Free Improv, with the three Europeans and one American consolidating a series of understated timbres and waveforms into a collection of tones. Amazingly – or perhaps not – both CDs reach the goal of positive music making, though admittedly LUGANO’s are more micro.

Quartet Noir’s partnership goes back at least to 1998, though French bassist Joëlle Léandre, Swiss drummer Fritz Hauser and his countryman, tenor and soprano saxophonist Urs Leimgruber earlier played together in a trio formation. Léandre has also partnered American pianist Marilyn Crispell in other circumstances. LUGANO germinates slowly as if it was a blossom slowly unfolding.

Speed up the camera work, like a Walt Disney nature film showing flowers blooming in seconds, and simultaneously crank up the volume, and you replicate the other CD. A first-time recording in this configuration, it hooks up British tenor saxophonist Paul Dunmall and bassist Paul Rogers – two-quarters of the Mujician band – with German pianist Alexander Von Schlippenbach, whose usual reed partner is Evan Parker. Extra man is New York-born, London-based drummer Tony Bianco. Considering Bianco is probably the only percussionist to have backed blues-rocker Edgar Winter, rock’n’roller Chuck Berry and pianist Keith Tippett – Mujician’s leader – he’s obvious up for anything.

And up he has to be in this fast company. The four hit the ground running – like Israeli commandos during the Entebbe raid – and don’t let up during the two, more-than- 29 minutes and almost-35 minute, selections that make up VESUVIUS.

From the beginning Von Schlippenbach kinetically chords cadenzas on the piano keys plus stretching and scraping the internal mechanism, as Dunmall honks, smears, slurs and spits glottal timbres. As the saxman continuously outputs altissimo trills and honks plus tart split tones, Rogers involves himself with patterned strums and their echoes, as well as harmonic finger-picking, done a cappella. Midway through the first piece the pianist’s cascading pedal-propelled fills are backed by cymbal slaps and layered flams and ruffs from the drummer

On both tracks Dunmall stretches and varies the tempos as the backing from Rogers – with whom he sometimes plays in duo – moves from strumming and bridge rattling to rubber-band like plucks. Once Von Schlippenbach sets up a combination of external organic melody and scraping and stopping of the internal string nodes, the staccato movement brings forth irregular arco pulsing from the bassist and a splayed vibrato from the saxman. Although the pianist is interconnecting chords and notes like a metronome, he’s knowledgeable enough about keyboard dynamics that each note is outlined and voiced properly no matter how quickly he plays. By the final variation of the second tune, as Rogers’ bass notes rise from cross-sticking fury caused by the pressure on Bianco’s kit, they form a level ostinato on which Dunmall’s flutter-tongued and pitch-vibrated improvisations meet up with the adagio ricochets from the piano’s stopped internal strings and outward tremolo notes.

Evolving with as many silences and pregnant pauses as notes, LUGANO’s first section may be almost 32 minutes long, but it’s likely that the band on VESUVIUS sounds as many notes in five minutes of either of its improvisations as Quartet Noir does on this, the CD’s lengthiest track. Throughout the Noir four seem to rely on timbres that are sensed as much as heard.

The overriding sonic at the beginning is a splintered whistle from Leimgruber’s reed that connects organically with sul ponticello and skittering bass movements and agitato drum rumbles, rim shots and bounces. With the sideband signals vibrating as much as the expressed textures, the track nearly concludes before a recognizable reed arpeggio is heard. Although Crispell strums the odd chord, her contribution is so low frequency as to seem unvoiced.

Throughout, the four sometimes reconfigure themselves into two duos – drums and piano plus sax and bass – until Part III. Finally the scrapes and stops on cymbal tops and cascading piano glissandi that have infrequently appeared before, transform from disconnected tones into melody. Nut-cracker-like pops from the drummer and Madwoman-like, speaking-in-tongues from Léandre suddenly solidify. As the bassist harmonizes in a cracked bel-canto voice along with louder, serpentine split tones from Leimgruber, Hauser spatters beats from his cymbals and Crispell contributes chordal excursions externally and from inside strings that sound as if they’re propelling cymbals placed on top of them. Then everything fades away.

Within a little more than one week in October 2004 two methods of modern quartet improv were exposed on these discs. Each is equally valid.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Vesuvius: 1. Salamander 2. Leviathan

Personnel: Vesuvius: Paul Dunmall (tenor saxophone); Alexander Von Schlippenbach (piano); Paul Rogers (7-string A.L.L. bass); Tony Bianco (drums)

Track Listing: Lugano: 1. Lugano (suite en 3 movements)

Personnel: Lugano: Urs Leimgruber (tenor and soprano saxophones); Marilyn Crispell, (piano); Joëlle Léandre (bass); Fritz Hauser (drums)

May 29, 2006

Joëlle Léandre & Akosh S.

Györ
Reqords

Joëlle Léandre
Concerto Grosso
Jazz’halo

Ramon Lopez Flowers Trio
Flowers of Peace
Leo

By Ken Waxman
November 21, 2005

One, two, three … Parisian Joëlle Léandre is the prime example of a schooled musician who utilizes her expertise in another genre to move into the first ranks of improvisation. Always insistent that she loves ands appreciates jazz, but can’t and doesn’t play it, the French double bassist came to improv in the late 1970s, after establishing herself as on of the paramount interpreters of contemporary classical compositions by the likes of John Cage and Giacinto Scelsi.

Since her embrace of Free Music, however, the Aix-en-Provence native has worked and recorded in a variety of contexts with groups ranging from duos to ensembles, and held her own – and then some – with such distinctive stylists as the late American soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy and British guitarist Derek Bailey.

One, two, three …This set of releases showcases the bull fiddler in trio, duo and solo sessions. Concerto Grosso is a very recent – January 2005 – two-disc tour-de-force, featuring only Léandre, her bass and her bow. Conversely, Györ pairs her with Hungarian-French reedist Akosh S. and is titled with the name of the Magyar city in which it was recorded. Flowers of Peace is the anomaly of the bunch, one of the bassist’s rare outings as a sideperson. Ostensible leader is drummer Ramon Lopez, another Paris resident, originally from Alicante, Spain, who works in a duo with pianist Christine Wodrascka, and from 1997 to 2000 was the drummer for the Orchestre National de Jazz (ONJ). Third participant is French pianist Sophia Domancich, who has created exceptional work on her own CDs and in the company of veterans like British saxophonist Elton Dean.

Recorded in Györ’s ancient, and one would assume unused, synagogue, the duo CD is a first-time, two track match-up between Léandre and the reedist whose real name is Szelevényi Ákos. A Paris resident since 1986, the Debrecen-born woodwind specialist plays tenor and soprano saxophones, metal clarinet, tarogato and flute here. His experience encompasses bands with bassist Didier Levallet and alto saxophonist Quentin Rollet. Meanwhile, the six tracks on Flowers of Peace were recorded in Paris for Radio France, while Concerto Grosso captures 14 solo improvisations live in Heidelberg, Germany.

Even a cursory listen to Concerto Grosso proves that the bull fiddler is easily able to carry a performance on her own and enrapture an audience. With her breakneck pizzicato runs as flexible as her sonorous bow work, Léandre’s comfortable manually manipulating every part of the double bass, not just the strings. As selected expressions are extended with unexpected finger finesse, she sometimes appears to be two complementary double bassists, and adding occasional quasi-scat vocalizations can transform herself into the Léandre trio.

“Le Sommeil d’Hercule” – loose translation: the sleepiness of Hercules – for instance starts with counter tones that, despite her non-jazz background, still resonate with Mingus-like inferences. Encompassing ricocheted pizzicato accents, hearty guitar-like strums, buzzing string vibrations and echoes, she then moves to darker and deeper tonal explorations. However, as she digs further into these sonic textures, she ensures that the output doesn’t neglect the andante and legato qualities of the bass. Modulating to other quadrants, timbres surface, first high-pitched, then droney in mid-range, finally intermingled as a polyphonic showcase. Col-legno shuffle bowing and wood reflecting accents dissipate into bottom-of-the-bridge drones, with a single strum serving as the tune’s coda

“For Tony”, on the other hand is a multi-tempo display of such extensive spiccato that at points, it seems as if Léandre’s cutting through the bass wood into the vibrations themselves. Double-timed, staccato expressions in different pitches fly by so swiftly that at points you’re not sure whether you’re hearing a Bluegrass fiddler or some descendent of Nicolò Paganini. Historically, however, it’s doubtful that 19th century “father of the modern violin” ever harmonized vocally while he soloed, or appeared to be extracting harmonies from inside the instrument for a finale, both of which are part of Léandre’s talents.

Her characteristic vocalizing gets even more of a showcase on “Parlotte”, as she begins chanting in between her sharp slides and plucks. Although Léandre’s probably using the unconnected verbal syllables for the onomatopoeia-like attachment they have to the tones she’s producing from her axe, recognizable words such as “fou” and “chic” are audible. Again emphasizing the cured wood attributes of her instrument, the track’s exit strategy is designed with col legno multiphonics.

Earth throbbing bass lines, flamenco finger picking and staccato pitchsliding are other techniques on show, with glissandi often used to express the roughness and hardness of the strings’ texture as well as their music-making attributes. With cascading double, triple and quadruple stopping plus agitato bowing that emphasize the upper partials of the notes rather than their fundamentals, her experimentation continues even in a concert situation.

One summation of these techniques arises in the bizarrely titled “Love”. Emphasizing, one would think, the heartbreak and pain that the emotion engenders, this nearly 10-minute piece is sul ponticello from its beginning, with the bassist’s approach more high-pitched and robotic than usual. As the jarring, discordant tones pierce the air like the proverbial nails dragged across a blackboard, she seems to be reveling in dissonance. Battering on the waist, ribs and belly of the bass, the tune’s climax is reached with such staccato pitchsliding that it sounds as if Léandre, grunting with exertion, is almost literally sawing the instrument apart.

Naturally, many strategies pursued solo, can be as satisfying done in pairs. The extended mutual improvisations on Györ prove the veracity of this statement.

Initially the sonic intermingling is such that it sounds as if Léandre and S could be playing different components of the same instrument, but soon the bassist advances to tremolo vibrations and the saxophonist to smeared and echoing timbres. As her bass lines fatten and become lower-pitched, he roughens his tenor tone with tongue slaps and trills, and she responds with double and triple staccato swelling.

Unleashing his metal clarinet, S shrills irregularly-pitched contralto chirps until Léandre’s encircling continuo leads to a sul tasto solo section. Taking up the challenge, he reappears with intense, sonorous obbligatos that uptick to tongue slaps, glottal punctuation and bell-muting episodes. Finally his textures splinter into shards of trilled and popped notes in ghost registers and she continues strumming, setting up a proper backdrop on which variations can be displayed. The finale involves crooked reed whines on his part and stropped, jagged perambulating string jettes on hers.

Even more spectacular, the nearly 25-minute “Györ part 2” weaves Jewish Magyar intonation into the performance through S’s a cappella ululation of sustained shofar-like timbres from his taragoto. After about a minute, Léandre joins in with darker, sustained double stopping behind his ethic-styled double tonguing.

Changing positions, the double bassist moves to the forefront, exposing andante variations on choked spiccato patterns that are struck near the peg box as well as the bridge. Protracted col legno thumps then intermingle with flute tones from S, which in context sound positively bird-like and melodious. At this point, panting verbal interjections appear along with slapped and stopped plucks from Léandre. With the metal clarinet back in use, S chokes out strangled yelps in between Herculean gusts, matching the bass woman’s stentorian sweeps and conspirational, whispered asides.

Not that all the notes are discordant, however. Slightly after the mid-point, S plays mellow, unaccompanied variations on the theme, with his clarinet tone as legato here as it was atonal earlier on. As trills, slurs and ghost notes bubble through his instrument’s body tube, and before he reenters with wiggling tongue stopping cadences, the bassist ratchets up her harmonic intensity, toughness and atonality. Conclusively, the climatic crescendo reveals choked, bellowing note piles, each rougher than the next. Beginning the postlude, Léandre gentles the reedist’s grainy growls and irregular pitch vibrations with a soothing continuum. These sweeping harmonies dissolve into single notes, pure sounds and finally silence.

Although Flowers of Peace, is under drummer Lopez’s name, there’s no sense of the six tracks being anything other than a group effort. With such powerful musical personalities as Domancich and Léandre involved, in fact, the drummer’s contributions must often be specifically highlighted within these instant compositions.

Almost as soon as “Aparajita”, begins, for instance, his slap cymbal resonation is buried underneath near-the-peg-box scratches from the bassist, who subsequently maneuvers her way in powerful pulses down the strings. Impressionistic piano harmonies quickly turn to accompaniment behind Léandre’s sul ponticello runs and the occasional ruffs and bounce from Lopez. During the almost 10 minutes of the tune, it’s as if the three have mutated into a Bizzaro version of the classic Bill Evans trio, with the piano arpeggios rougher than the original played, the bass strokes more abstract and the drumming more self-effacing.

When the bass shuffle bowing become even more abstract, Lopez unexpectedly trigger a series of tabla-like tones which are then joined by strummed low-pitched tremolo patterns from the bassist. Here, the versatile percussionist is able to express more than Carnatic cross rhythms, however. In tandem with tabla strokes, he seems to be using his sticks to sound European style percussion accents from his bass and snare drums. Meanwhile Domancich is building up metronomic accents after stabbing lower-pitched notes from the keys, as Léandre cuts across both these lines with double stopping bowing.

Cantilevering is noticeable on other tracks as well. Broken chords unite the pianist and the bassist in “Chevrefeuille”, for example, when Domancich’s quick syncopated cadenzas unroll on top of shuffle-bowed bass chords – first slowly then faster. Shortly afterwards, Lopez strikes claves together, with the pitter-patter beat presaging the pianist’s treble clef trills and the bassist’s tremolo glissandi. When Domancich’s accents space out even more, Léandre collates her strings into a rhythmic continuo and Lopez rattles his ride and sizzle cymbals. Staccato piano pulses bring forth characteristic verbal yelps from the bassist.

Distended keyboard pressures, smacks on the bull fiddle’s wooden body plus inventive stick work resulting in nerve beats, cymbal rumbles and the suggestion of glass armonica friction, enliven other tracks. With each trio member supplementing his or her thematic work with percussive asides, the resulting voicing involves as many vibrations and overtones as possible.

Perhaps that’s the clue as to why Léandre is so effective in such small groupings. She – and by extension those with whom she improvises – expose so many textures that the results imply timbres from more players. Performance may begin solo, in duo or in trio, but bring in musical multiples of one, two or three before the finale.

November 21, 2005

JOËLLE LÉANDRE/INDIA COOKE

Firedance
Red Toucan # RT 9327

STEVE LACY/JOËLLE LÉANDRE
One More Time
Leo Records CD LR 422

Partnerships new and old, each of these fine CDs feature French bassist Joëlle Léandre bonding musically with an American. Both prove that the versatile Paris-based low-pitched string player can adapt and amplify unique timbres produced by other players who have little in common besides birthplace.

Fittingly each was recorded outside the United States. On ONE MORE TIME, her main man is the late soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy, with the CD recorded in Brussels during one of the longtime expatriate’s farewell to Europe concerts before he relocated to Boston. FIREDANCE finds the bull fiddler at the Guelph (Ontario) Jazz Festival matching licks with Bay-area violinist India Cooke. Léandre’s longtime experience with outside string slingers like Lisbon’s Carlos Zingaro makes her the perfect foil for Cooke, who has played with advanced bassists like Canadian Lisle Ellis. Both also worked with trombonist George Lewis.

Poignant, especially after you hear Lacy’s complimentary telephone message to Léandre that is its final track, the CD is doubly valuable because it’s one of the saxman’s final documents before his death in 2004. But after a half-century as an improviser Lacy was no sentimentalist. He praises the duo work because he knows how good it is.

One of the reasons the French bassist with the classical background and the dyed-in-the-wool American Free Jazzman worked so well together was a shared understanding of performance and links to their respective instruments. Part of “One More Time 3”, for instance, features Léandre’s skewed bass licks introduced by a bit of music hall-like scat singing. The fit is perfect as is Lacy’s half-sung/half-spoken exhortation for “one more time” at the beginning of the tune. More vaudeville than concert hall, its very cadences mirror his distinctive gravelly horn chirps when he finally concentrates on the saxophone.

Someone who never lost sight of the song form, as benefits a discipline of Thelonious Monk, there are points in this recital that you swear there’s a show tune lurking somewhere inside Lacy’s improvisation. This tendency and so much more is displayed on the more-than-32-minute first track.

Ricocheting between broken octaves and double counterpoint, the two musicians finesse a collection of repeated notes, slurs, squirming vibrations, trills and slides. When he modulates towards coloratura, she stands her ground with staccato sweeps. Should he sideslip and flutter-tongue, she retorts with sul tasto patterning and by striking the bass’s ribs and belly. Following a few duck-like quacks he fades into the background at midpoint, allowing her to use tremolo multiphonics to involve all her strings in steady architectural motions. Returning to the fray, tooting and triple-tonguing, the reedist’s tongue stops and trills are backed with sul tasto bowing that creates extra textural graininess. Eventually his falsetto cries bring forth sul ponticello stopping from her lowest strings, as the two finally resolve the piece with a simultaneous climax.

If despite the gaps, ONE MORE TIME seems all of a part, then FIREDANCE is definitely divided into seven sections. Also despite the early hour – the concert began at 10:30 a.m.– and unlike the bittersweet Lacy meeting, the Cooke- Léandre get-together was so celebratory, that the fiddler was emboldened to try tap dancing on the polished wooden floor at the beginning of track five.

More evenly matched than the bassist and saxophonist, the two players not only produce every sort of string permutations, but are moved to verbalization every so often. Cooke’s vocal expressions at one point resemble shamanistic speaking-in-tongues, while Léandre’s could be cattle drive wrangler whoops.

Individually, their techniques run from bumble bee-like spiccato chording from the violinist to sonorous, wide-ranging sweeps and plucks from the double bassist. Together the expansions can move from staccato runs to basso construction that appears to involve the instruments’ tail pieces as much as the lower-pitched strings. Comfortable with one another, often both apply enough torque to their strings so that the resulting timbres concentrate into dense polyharmony. Additionally, when Léandre vibrates her instrument’s highest points and Cooke’s her axe’s lowest, distinguishing one from the other is nearly impossible.

Remaining a European, the bassist, who always insists that she’s never played “jazz” is linked to Continental New music when she stops her upper partials to create multiphonics. Conversely, when the fiddler implies different textures, they’re definitely American – her pizzicato strums are as deliberate as are those from a Bluegrass banjo picker. Similarly, when lyrical arco cadenzas slide down the scale to become bravura blues runs, the styling of jug-band fiddlers like Butch Cage comes to mind.

Since their initial Guelph encounter Cooke and Léandre have had several more musical meetings, with this CD severing as a high-class calling card. Although Léandre will never play with Lacy again, at least we have the other CD to remember their classy teamwork.

--Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Firedance: 1. Firedance 1 2. Firedance 2 3.Firedance 3 4. Firedance 5. Firedance 6. Firedance 6 7. Firedance 7

Personnel: Firedance: India Cooke (violin); Joëlle Léandre (bass)

Track Listing: One: 1. One More Time 1 2. One More Time 2 3. One More Time 3 4. Phone message

Personnel: One: Steve Lacy (soprano saxophone); Joëlle Léandre (bass)

November 7, 2005

Gaguik Mouradian/Claude Tchamitchian

Le monde est une fenêtre
émouvance

Joëlle Léandre/Gianni Lenoici
Sur une balançoire
Ambiances Magnetic

By Ken Waxman
January 3, 2005

Giving themselves new challenges, two of France’s most accomplished double bass players are involved in duos that stretch the definition of improvisation.

Expanding her sound philosophy that encompasses so-called modern classical music as well as improv, Joëlle Léandre has recorded 14 miniatures with Gianni Lenoici, a pianist from Monopoli, Italy, who has a similar background to hers. Speaking of background, Claude Tchamitchian, usually found in the company of hard-core improvisers such as pianist Sophia Domancich, guitarist Raymond Boni and reedist Daunik Lazro, here taps into his Armenian roots, improvising with kamancha master Gaguik Mouradian.

Usually fashioned with two or three strings, but here with four, the kamancha is about the size of a small banjo, is held vertically resting on a pike, and is played with a bow like a cello. Mouradian, who has lived in France since 2000, is a teacher and traditional kamancha player, respected enough to make concert appearances as a soloist with the (Armenian) National Ensembles of Song and Dance. Adapting his Middle Eastern-oriented instrument to freer music, he has played with Tchamitchian for a decade, as well as with other improvisers such as Boni and American saxist Joe McPhee.

A forceful player, Le monde est une fenêtre (the world is a window) finds the kamanchaist duetting with the bassist on 15 tracks divided into groups entitled “Voix”, “Visions”, “Visages”, “Rivages”, “Regards” and a final “Rêve”. Here Mouradian’s command of mughams, a Middle Eastern modal system, melds and rebound off the pizzicato and arco styling of Tchamitchian, whose experience encompasses work with choreographers, electroacoustians and so-called classical musicians as well as improvisers.

Oddly enough, when the two Europeans get into full string band mode suggestions of American Old-Timey sounds appear as well. After all, with 70% of Armenia’s terrain mountainous, it obvious there’s much more mountain music there than in Appalachia. Utilizing Persian inflections from the style of the ashoughs or Armenian troubadours, Mouradian’s playing is at times both polyphonically otherworldly and liltingly medieval.

You can hear this as early as the first track when his swelling sounds subdivide into multi-string, oscillating timbres. More sonorous, Tchamitchian forcefully pulls on and plucks at his strings and by the second and third tracks expand his palate with a dark, buzzing arco, which perfectly intersects with the fiddler’s bowed, contrapuntal, yet somehow homey, melody making.

Paced with spaced broken counterpart, the two conjure up distinct sound images. The final track, for instance, has all the trappings of a through-composed recital piece with established harmonies and the jettes played just so. Other times, as on “Visages Part 1”, Mouradian’s vibrating nodes suggest a brace of violins, while Tchamitchian’s ponticello bowing with a pronounced tremolo becomes so abstract and vociferous that at points he seems to riffing on his bass’s belly and ribs.

On “Rivages Part 1”, as Tchamitchian double stops, Mouradian’s bowing takes its distinctive Eurasian melancholy further to the east, arriving at a pensive timbre that resembles that of the four-string Mongolian sihu. As staccato asides become more diffuse, he makes common cause with the bull fiddler and the two construct the equivalent of a Cossack string orchestra out of four low-pitched and four high-pitched strings.

A forceful, inventive improviser in many circumstances, Tchamitchian’s adoption of new textures not only takes in European-style double and triple stopping, shuffle bowing and col legno techniques, but others that radiate elsewhere.

On one tune you could swear he’s playing an electric bass guitar. On another his axe of choice could be a santur or Armenian zither whose strings are struck with small sticks. From spaces near the tuning pegs he manages to produce flute-like whistles as well as disconnected jagged swipes from around the bridge. “Regards Part 1” showcases simple string slaps, midway between the styles of Charles Mingus and Pops Foster. These become perfect complements to Mouradian’s ethereal fiddle overtones.

Not clichéd world music, but multi-cultural improvisation, Le monde’s one drawback is the number and length of its tracks. Fewer, longer ones would have given more scope to the achievement here.

That’s perhaps the only drawback to Sur une balançoire as well. Fourteen tracks, ranging in length from slightly more than 90 seconds to less than five minutes really makes you yearn for more expansive interface between the two. Léandre, for one, is an old hand in this format, having recorded bass-piano duos with, among others, American Eric Watson, Japanese Kumi Wakao and Ryoji Hojito as well as Lenoici’s countryman Giorgio Occhipinti.

Lenoici, who teaches at the Nino Rota conservatory and also plays in reedist Eugenio Colombo’s jazz quartet, brings a non-idiomatic approach to his work here, including preparing his piano. On “balançoire 12”, for example, Lenoici responds with occasional, internal flat-picking with driving broken octaves to counter Léandre’s stretched lines, sudden ponticello swipes and sharp, resonating shuffle bowing. But who creates the pitched dobro-like string lines at the end? Is it Léandre or Lenoici?

The situation is clearer on tracks like “balançoire 5”, where the bass textures are initially shrill and harshly high-pitched, while the pianist outputs high intensity, romantic cadenzas and circular arpeggios, pitched forward, as if he was playing 19th century Russian music. As the bass turns to arco sweeps, Lenoici introduces a walking bass pattern himself, but still playing prettily as Léandre’s shuffled, extended cadences double and triple in pressure.

Lenoici’s output isn’t all recital delicacy however. At points he confronts the bassist’s whistling ponticello with strident, internal string sweeps. Furthermore, on “balançoire 2”, “balançoire 3” and “balançoire 4” he meets successive four-string challenges head on. Pedal-emphasized, high-intensity, dark voicing intersects with spunky, squeaky bass abrasions and clipped key accents, then expansive broken chords face extended thumps and walking bass lines. Eventually these twists and turns build up portamento, to Lenoici’s exploration of internal string preparations and stops that meet wood and string-stretching efforts from the bassist.

Léandre who sporadically accompanies herself verbally with staccato nonsense syllables, mostly confines her singing to her fingers, producing aviary-like string cries with analogous facility that she emphasizes recital-like counterpoint. Yet generally her double-bass facility is met by appropriate pianisms from Lenoici, whether they’re low- intensity clinking timbres that could come from a music box or pedal-powered tremolo.

Une balançoire is a seesaw in French, but only rarely in this commensurately balanced duet does the sound tilt in favor of one or another musician -- and the same can be said of the other CD.

January 3, 2005

LÉANDRE/MANERI/MARGUET/RYAN

For Flowers
Leo CD LR 394

Finding French bassist Joëlle Léandre involved in an ad-hoc improvising situation with unexpected musical partners is so common as to be customary. She’s someone equally at home dissecting notated pieces by John Cage with Japanese musician as playing Free Music with a mixture of Europeans and Americans. What is remarkable is her partners on this eight-track CD recorded at a jazz festival.

While French drummer Christophe Marguet is a new acquaintance, she regularly plays with other percussionists. However, except for a couple of instances, electro-acoustic sounds haven’t been a part of her discography. Which makes so noticeable the presence of Joel Ryan on computer-based electronics, who is usually part of reedist Evan Parker’s Electro-Acoustic Ensemble. Even more conspicuous is American violinist Mat Maneri. Born into improv -- his father is microtonal reedist Joe -- Maneri usually sticks to the ecstatic side of jazz, gigging with the likes of pianist Mathew Shipp and bassist William Parker, while the bassist’s usual fiddle sidekick is Lisbon's Carlos Zingaro.

With improvised music the art of never doing the same thing once, this new team makes FOR FLOWERS fascinating, as well as a bit disappointing. For despite deluxe contributions all around, relative unfamiliarity means that Maneri doesn’t yet connect with Léandre as Zingaro does.

You can note this most distinctly on “Iris”, the almost 14 minute final track. As Maneri’s ascending timbres shimmer, helped by Ryan’s electronic voodoo, he’s interrupted by polyrhythmic plucks from Léandre. Staccato, diffuse jettes from the fiddler bring forth such percussive smacks on the tailpiece and strings from the bassist that Marguet joins in with press rolls, maraca-like rattles and bell-pealing cymbal thwacks. Soon shuffle-bowing ponticello lines are echoing through the air courtesy of Ryan, as the two string-slingers finally mesh. A crescendo of augmented tones and scraped cadenzas are sounded in different staves from the violin and bull fiddle, until the electronic pulse helps deconstruct the downstrokes into a legato union.

Ryan’s MVP status is confirmed throughout, since it’s often hard to distinguish which soaring timbres are helped by his dial twisting and which are actually direct to disc. He’s most prominent on “Crocus”, where it’s obvious that some of those sounds must be electronically manipulated. Léandre’s skills are such that it’s most likely she that creates what appears to be replication of small animals scampering on the belly and waist of her bass. But she’s hasn’t yet figured out how to create laser gun whizzes. These futuristic extensions fit well with the hand drumming style Marguet exhibits on this track and others. Restrained, he often appears to be polishing his kit rather than assaulting it. But the modest textures he produces are more appropriate than any aggressive drumming would be.

Other places, when the string players meet with extended caprices and double- stopping harmonies the results are admirable. On “Tulips”, for instance legit glissandos from Maneri turn to scraped heavy metal, made more atonal by electronic reverb and distortion that extends and reimages the notes. This encourages the bassist to begin vocalizing as she plays, whispering nonsense monosyllables that are half way between lyric soprano and orgasmic cry. Finally, a just-out-of-earshot, organ-like chord gradually reveals itself as an arco string accompaniment, first played by Maneri than expanded by Ryan.

The CD is much more than a clash between moderato microtonalism on one hand and broken cadenzas on the other. But when one tune dissolves into lugubriousness, you sense something missing. Fans of Léandre and Maneri may appreciate it more and for different reasons. But it looks like a rematch is in order.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Hibiscus 2. White Lily 3. Water lily 4. Violet 5. Crocus 6. Tulips 7. Lilac & Red Poppy 8. Iris

Personnel: Mat Maneri (violin); Joëlle Léandre (bass and voice); Christophe Marguet (drums); Joel Ryan (computer-based electronics)

October 11, 2004

JOËLLE LÉANDRE/MARK NAUSEEF

Evident
482 Music 482-1024

Building a CD around what elsewhere would be called a rhythm section is a concept that could only come with the propagation of Free Music. That’s because its practitioners -- in this case French bassist Joëlle Léandre and American percussionist Mark Nauseef -- don’t follow the hierarchical designations of so-called classical, jazz or popular musics. With no front line, each instrumentalist is potentially both a soloist and an accompanist and that’s why it’s evident that EVIDENT succeeds on its own terms.

A nine-part, unrehearsed mediation on creative interplay, the instant compositions here depend much more on polyphony and polyrhythms than conventional harmony. Pertinent textures result from Léandre gliding from iron-finger plucking to pinpointed shuffle bowing, while Nauseef’s percussion legerdemain involves sounds with timbres as different as those produced by finger cymbals or hollow wood blocks.

In a reversal of form, it’s the bassist who holds onto the bottom of the music, creating scraped ponticello, that make it appear as if she’s rubbing the finish off her steel strings. Then again Léandre has never followed the expected, seeing as she’s been involved in both the free music and New music camps. She’s equally at home interpreting the written compositions of John Cage, as improvising with Swiss pianist Irène Schweizer or British guitarist Derek Bailey.

Nauseef, to his credit, doesn’t become overly percussive in his work. This may have been a difficult decision for a drummer whose playing partners have included ex-Police guitarist Andy Summers, ex-Cream bassist Jack Bruce and The Velvet Underground. Still the drummer’s versatility has also allowed him to work successfully with Javanese gamelan bands, Ghanaian music ensembles, West Coast composer Lou Harrison and jazz bassist Steve Swallow.

With the entire concert CD created without prior discussion, you note the almost mind-reading qualities of the two musicians on a track like “Evident 3”, when Nauseef’s resonating bell-ringing tones are suddenly -- and somehow -- emulated and reflected by similar bell-like plucks from Léandre. Then she begins legato broken chording, amplifying the notes as she ranges over the strings and adding Asiatic-sounding panting vocalizing in unison with her arco feints.

Onomatopoeia treatments from the bassist, also include happy hiker whistles that meet rattling percussion from Nauseef, and are most pronounced on “Evident 5”. Here, after a virtuoso demonstration of her pizzicato effects, including expansive cello-range resonance and col legno salvos, Léandre unveils a quasi-dramatic recitation filled with sibilant intonations that constitute themselves into what could be a secret language. Instrumentally, these nonsense syllables are extended with the percussionist accompanying her with shuffling, unselected cymbals, resonation from a plastic cowbell and what honestly appears to be the battering of garbage can lids.

Unconventional percussion is Nauseef’s stock-in-trade throughout this session. Particular preference is shown to the varied tones that can be stuck on vertical chimes, the scrapes and slides that result from sharp objects grating against ride cymbals, and what sounds like the resonation of ping pong balls on a hard surface.

Not to be outdone, the bassist tosses off ponticello and shuffle bowing as regularly and inflates intense spiccato to the sounds of an entire string section. Accelerated fiddling often makes it appear as if she’s wearing the finish off her bass’s steel strings and her bow swoops have enough heft to create her own percussion, no matter what Nauseef is playing. In contrast, she can also come up a feather light line that’s so scrupulous vibrated that it could also arise from the pressure on a reed rather than on a string.

When a bassist and percussionist like these two get going, the contributions of other musicians aren’t missed at all.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Evident 1 2. Evident 2 3. Evident 3 4. Evident 4 5.Evident 5 6. Evident 6 7. Evident 7 8. Evident 8 9. Evident 9

Personnel: Joëlle Léandre (bass and voice); Mark Nauseef (percussion and found objects)

April 19, 2004

BRETT LARDER/JOËLLE LÉNDRE/KAZUHISA UCHICASHI

No Day Rising
Spool Line SPL-121

KEVIN NORTON/JOËLLE LÉNDRE/TOMÁS ULRICH
Ocean of Earth
Barking Hoop BY-BKH007

Recording studios may have been frequented as often as classrooms during the time French bassist Joëlle Léandre spent as a visiting professor at Oakland, Calif.’s Mills College between September and December 2002. These CDs are just two of the many sessions the peripatetic bassist was involved with during that time.

Not that this reflects opportunism or any lowering of Léandre’s high musical standards however. As a European improviser she welcomed the chance to play with as many non-Europeans as possible. Plus, as a true improviser committed to creativity of the moment, it wasn’t as if studio work took up oodles of time, even if, as in the case of OCEAN OF EARTH, she was away from her California base.

Unlike rock bands which spend weeks, months, and -- in the case of audio procrastinators like Boston -- years in the studio, improvisers often find that an intensive day is often enough time to create an exceptional CD. Unlike rockers as well, they’re sure enough of their creativity and understand their instruments well enough to do this.

Listening to both albums, recorded in October 2002 on subsequent days on opposite American coasts, doesn’t give you any sense of hasty preparation or non-musical tension. What you hear instead is five musicians performing at the height of their powers -- though you may wonder if the bassist has some particular curative for jet lag.

Making NO DAY RISING even more of an international affair, neither of Léandre’s partners is American. Brett Larner, who plays three different kotos here is a transplanted Canadian now in San Leandro, Calif. Someone who spent years in Tokyo studying koto with master Kazue Sawai, Larner, is also involved with electroacoustic improvisations. He has played with composer Anthony Braxton, guitarist Taku Sugimoto and with no imput mixing board stylist Toshimaru Nakamura. Another member of the American/Japanese experimental scene is the CD’s third participant. Guitarist and daxophone player Kazuhisa Uchihashi a former member of Ground Zero, who more recently was in the band R.U.B. with American saxist Ned Rothenberg.

Larner, who reveals that the CD was put together in the 12 hours following Uchihashi’s solo performance at Mills, just after Léandre returned from the East Coast, calls it “a peculiar set of short pieces, almost a pop album”. American Idol fans and improv followers will likely disagree.

Instead what’s here are 13 mid-length pieces ranging from less 90 seconds to more than seven minutes, titled for the time of day at which they were recorded, and dedicated to creating unexpected sounds. Interestingly enough, the daxophone, which when bowed, scraped, tapped or otherwise vibrated can produce a variety of sounds from falsetto to basso is actually used sparingly. It’s the traditional koto, bass and guitar which are most put to use.

Thus on a piece like “11:42 p.m.”, you figure the intermittent beeps probably come from prepared bass koto, the high pitched Appalachian-style fiddling from the top range of the bass strings, and undercurrent of strumming from the guitar -- or do they? In the same way it’s pretty clear that the arching snorts, falsetto cries and dog yowls on “11:01 p.m.” are coming from the dax. But the later dialogue that resembles a wolf howling at the moon meeting a burrowing anteater, is that Uchihashi’s doing, Léandre’s or Larner’s?

On the other hand, cross-cultural and musical asides resonate on a piece like “2:42 a.m.” Here among a collection of pauses and silences, the guitarist seems to reverberating fireside cowboy tune chords and the bassist roughly punishing and scraping her strings, as the bass koto provides a dramatic continuum on the bottom.

Or take “9:15 p.m.”, also the longest track. Beginning with definitely focused arco strokes from the bass that dissolve into bow-tip squeaks, currents resembling electronic impulses hang in the air. Soon, after resonating metal-against-metal scrapes and guitar strumming thumps further muddy the sound, a sudden pacific interlude arises as if bamboo flute tones had leaked into the soundstage. With Uchihashi turning to speedy flat-picking that recreates the tone of a National steel guitar, Larner appears to counter with vibes-like pings from the koto, using the tsume or ivory plectra as mallets.

Other timbres seemingly replicated are as unrelated as bass flute tones, electronic organ crescendos, waterlogged cries, bottleneck guitar runs and ghostly harp glissandos. So describing the music as either Oriental, Occidental, North American, European, Canadian, American, French or even acoustic or electronic seems reductive. Some of it is staccato, some legato. Some involves many notes bunched into a statement, other parts concentrate on the spidery manifestation of a single note.

Keeping you guessing, it illustrates musical rule bending without fear or let down, which is what masterful sustained experimentation should exhibit.

This is even more apparent on OCEAN OF EARTH. Recorded the day before in New Jersey, these 20, more expressively titled tracks are the result of a first-ever musical meeting between Léandre and two Americans, cellist Tomas Ulrich and percussionist Kevin Norton.

Someone who has played in different Braxton ensembles for nearly a decade, Norton has also involved himself in many forms of improv, working with players as different as guitarist James Emery, trombonist Steve Swell and saxist Alfred Harth. Featured on three of Norton’s earlier CDs, Ulrich has also performed with contrasting stylists such as tenormen Joe Lovano and Ivo Perelman, not to mention Braxton and bassist Dominic Duval.

Unambiguously more percussive than the previous disc for obvious reasons, the CD isn’t weighted down with drum action however. Instead Norton’s hands are usually shaping elongated and glinting vibraphone or marimba chords or extracting offbeat rhythmic pulses from what is described as “homemade and store-bought percussion”.

On “Trio for the end of time” he jockeys up and down the metal bars as the bassist saws away effervescently and the cellist double-stops to produce further decoration. When Ulrich’s tone turns more discordant and shrill, and Léandre somehow sound as if she’s broom sweeping with her bull fiddle, Norton lets loose with a protuberance of cymbal whaps then turns his bars into bells and finally back to the vibes. Then the two string players combine for arco swoops.

Legit-sounding unison bowed bass and cello also makes its appearance on “Opposite action”, but expressing himself on toms and snares the drummer’s time is closer to what many would hear as jazz. As the cellist and bassist move up the scale to involve themselves in an Impressionistic fantasia of repeated grace notes and glissandos, Norton varies the tempo to such an extent that they decelerate into low gear, surrounding his final, near military drum tattoo with eddying, squeaking slides.

There are even times as on “Goodbye Blues” when Norton’s ringing vibe timbres and Léandre’s steady pulse could have come from the Modern Jazz Quartet’s Milt Jackson and Percy Heath respectively, so straightforward do they sound. Here as elsewhere, though, Norton appears to favor a multi-mallet Gary Burton approach over Jackson’s concentrated single stick approach. And it’s doubtful that Heath ever murmured pseudo-operatic gibberish and definitely, if not deliberately obscure French syllables while (wo)manhandling the bass as Léandre does on “Saltimbanques/Acrobats”.

With the repertoire of bent notes, extended techniques, tugs, sweeps, shakes, rasps and glisses -- not to mention piercing shrills from Acme slide and non-Acme whistles -- the textures and tones here are extended even further than on the California-recorded session. And surprises abound.

Thus something like “Fairport confusion blues” doesn’t pay homage to the British folk-ballad group of the 1970s, but with powerful cello-plucks resembles the visceral folk-blues that Julius Hemphill often created. Unison pizzicato strings and a steady shuffle beat from the drums would have been familiar to Hemphill, but even he may have wondered which object Norton is striking besides drum rims and wooden blocks to produce what could be the sound of a slinky working its way down the stairs. Then there’s “Edye”, where, without electronic augmentation, the strings manage to replicate a woodwind choir.

Elsewhere arco strings rasp like angry birds, Old-Timey string band suggestions vie for space with Impressionistic chamber trio output as vibes sound like rolling logs and marimbas like a tolling clock.

By the time the clock actually tolls for this session you’re convinced that as long as the mood and pulsation are aligned with the proper participants, there’s no questioning the musical worth of one-off meetings like these.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: No: 1. 5:15 p.m. 2. 5:48 p.m. 3. 6:48 p.m. 4. 8:03 p.m. 5. 9:15 p.m. 6. 11:01 p.m. 7. 11:42 p.m. 8. 1:02 a.m. 9. 2:00 a.m. 10. 2:42 a.m. 11. 4:04 a.m. 12. 5:09 a.m. 13. 5:31 a.m.

Personnel: No: Kazuhisa Uchihashi (electric guitar, daxophone); Joëlle Léandre (bass); Brett Larner (koto, bass koto, prepared bass koto)

Track Listing: Ocean: 1. Océan de terre/Ocean of earth 2. Nous de nous 3. Saltimbanques/Acrobats 4. Pour Guigou, Sophie et Leo 5. Inclusive radiance 6. Goodbye blues 7. Flying blind, seeing everything 8. Edye 9. Pour Eva B 10. A book of great worth and importance 11. Trio for the end of time 12. D Major 13. Opposite action 14. C minor 15. Mai se découvre... 16. Parallel text 17. Je ne vous ai jamais connu 18. Attainable syntactical destinations 19. Fairport confusion blues 20. L’adieu/The farewell

Personnel: Ocean: Tomas Ulrich (cello, voice, non-Acme whistle); Joëlle Léandre (bass, voice); Kevin Norton (drums, vibraphone, marimba, homemade and store-bought percussion (including Acme slide whistle)

January 12, 2004

FRED FRITH/JOËLLE LÉANDRE/JONATHAN SEGEL

Tempted to Smile
Spool SZ-SPL120-CD

FRED FRITH
Rivers and Tides
Winter & Winter 910 092-2

Of all the musicians with a non-jazz background who have embraced improv over the past few years, British-born, California-based guitarist/composer Fred Frith seems to have brought the most to the table by using freer impulses to amplify his own versatility.

During his 20-odd years in the United States he’s forged alliances with musicians as different as East Coast saxophonist John Zorn and West Cost kotoist Miya Masaoka. A founding member of Henry Cow, Britain’s original Art Rock, band, he keeps his rock chops up playing with the likes of Canadian guitarist René Lussier, while his ongoing European connections have included compositions for film, theatre and dance.

RIVERS AND TIDES, the soundtrack for Thomas Riedelsheimer's film of the same name, is a definite chamber work written by Frith and performed by him plus a German trio of woodwinds, acoustic bass and percussion. TEMPTED TO SMILE on the other hand, is out-and-out free improv, recorded in Berkeley, Calif. by Frith on guitar, American violinist/guitarist Jonathan Segel and French bassist Joëlle Léandre, who was then teaching at California’s Mills College along with Frith. Léandre, whose talents as a contemporary composition interpreter were well established in the so-called serious music world before she turned to improv has followed a similar path to Frith’s, playing with everyone from American trombonist George Lewis to Portuguese violinist Carlos Zingaro.

Parenthetically, you wonder if during her apprentice years at the Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique de Paris, Léandre ever imagined that one day she would share a recording date with two rock-identified guitarists: Frith, and Segel, whose history includes Camper Van Beethoven and Sparklehorse.

Speaking of the conservatory, it appears that Frith’s associates on the Riedelsheimer project -- Wolfgang Stryi on soprano saxophone, bass clarinet, bassist Karoline Höfler and percussionist Bernd Settelmeyer -- are New musicians rather than improvisers. Coupled with the actualities of running and bubbling water from the documentary, the three interpret Frith’s score, which he himself tints with additional samples and instrumental work on guitar, violin, piano, berimbao and one-string Afro-Brazilian bow.

Elongated rubbed abrasions and droning reverberations appear from the manipulations of the berimbao’s thin string with a blunt object, with that buzz amplified by the basket shaker or caxi. Frith also adds bird-like violin string chirping, stately piano chords and what sounds like tiny percussion instruments rolled along the floor. In contrast, the others often sound as if they’re engaged in playing as a baroque chamber trio, creating a Triumph of the Will-like march or, with Frith’s string band input, a cheerful, dancing czarda. It’s a rare juxtaposition of First World and Third World sounds.

“VII” provides a pointilistic climax for the CD and soundtrack, as flowing liquid timbres combine with reed shrills, expanded cymbal shimmers and low-pitched pedal point bass notes. Frith elaborates some folksy, Mountain music-style guitar picking, and what sounds like quivering accordion tones and sampled drones twitters that complement woodwind key pops and an almost-burlesque of Impressionistic keyboard literature. With berimbao scratches mounting in volume, water torrent resonance makes its appearance as well.

Deep in the heart of improv, the timbres, tones and pitches of the other CD aren’t as easily attached to sound sources. Considering Frith is described as playing “etc.” as well as guitar, there’s the suspicion that samples and maybe even the berimbao make an appearance. On “The Glass of Absinthe” for instance, it appears that both Frith and Segel are on guitars, with the results including extended slackening of the strings in a Hawaiian manner coupled with bottleneck suggestions from the other gitbox, making the ethnic connections stronger. Here and elsewhere there are crashes and tugs on the six-strings as well as thumps from the four strings of the bull fiddle.

“The Palace at 4 am” highlights string-induced mosquito-like buzzing and flailing, chords from the guitar, splayed, Middle-Eastern tonal glissandos from the fiddle, and a solid continuum from the bass. Between the pitch sliding from all instruments, Frith assembles a Sandy Bull-like chromatic guitar fantasia.

Perhaps taking advantage of what’s on hand, “La Valise” centres on a dialogue in French between Léandre and probably Frith, as a speedy collection of miniscule EuroImprov moves come to the fore. Expanding the dense, percussive rhythms --from the top of a suitcase perhaps -- the bassist seems to move from arco slashes to what sound like the reverberations of sticks placed horizontally between her strings. Segel squeaks out timbres and emphasizes pitches from the area near his tuning pegs, while Frith bangs the wooden surface as often as he plays the strings of his guitar.

Finally, the entire adventure is wrapped up with the appropriately titled “Housecleaning at the Beginning of the New Year” -- although the session was recorded in November. The caxi shakes and scrapes, a thwacking whip sound is heard, bells ring, bowls vibrate, a pennywhistle tootles, ping-pong balls ricochet and it appears as if Léandre is dragging her bass peg along the floor. As Frith appears to be creating new timbres by crumbling tissue paper, Segel shrills elevated tones from his violin.

Composition or improvisation -- take your pick, Frith et. al are able to do both with convincing precision.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Rivers: 1. Part I 2. Part II 3. Part III 4. Part IV 5. Part V 6. Part VI 7. Part VII 8. Part VIII

Personnel: Rivers: Wolfgang Stryi (soprano saxophone, bass clarinet); Fred Frith (guitar, samples, violin, piano, berimbao); Karoline Höfler (bass); Bernd Settelmeyer (percussion)

Track Listing: 1. From Ice to Steam 2. Portrait of a Boy 3. Sideshow 4. The Glass of Absinthe 5. Smell My Halo 6. The Palace at 4 am 7. Hey Sonny 8. La Valise 9. Goodbye Pop 10. Tempted To Smile 11. Housecleaning at the Beginning of the New Year

Personnel: Jonathan Segel (violin and guitar); Fred Frith (guitar); Joëlle Léandre (bass)

November 24, 2003

JOSEPH SCIANNI

One eyed Jack
Cadence Jazz Records CJR 1148

JOËLLE LÉANDRE
Signature
Red Toucan RT 9321

Antithetical object lessons in how to approach a piano-bass duo, these notable discs are each impressive in their own ways. Yet the difference in approach has less to do with the fact that the protagonist of ONE EYED JACK is a male American pianist and of SIGNATURE a female French bassist, than its relationship to a host of dissimilar musical factors.

On the surface there are initially many similarities between the two CDs. Pianist Joseph Scianni and bassist Joëlle Léandre are both prodigiously classically trained, he with a doctorate in composition from Rochester’s Eastman School of music, she with advanced degrees from the Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique de Paris and the Center for Creative and Performing Arts in Buffalo. Both are involved with notated music, Scianni having written MUSIC FOR QUIET LISTENING and produced Glenn Gould’s recordings of Arnold Schoenberg’s piano concerto, and Léandre universally recognized as a paramount interpreter of the works of John Cage, Giacinto Scelsi, Aldo Clemeni and other New music composers. Both are also deeply allied to uncompromising improvised sounds. This commitment has been with the pianist since he worked with cornettist Don Cherry and, most notably, bassist David Izenzon in the early 1960s, and was intensified in the 1990s -- after years spent as a university music professor -- with players like bassist Dominic Duval and drummer Jay Rosen. Currently a visiting professor at California’s Mills College, the bassist has collaborated with the cream of contemporary improvisers including guitarist Derek Bailey, saxophonist Steve Lacy and pianist Irène Schweizer among many others.

However careful listening to the discs reveals basic differences. No matter how they play, Scianni and his sidemen -- bassist Ken Filiano on all tracks but two; bassist Hal Onserud and saxman Blaise Siwula on the two longest -- create improvisations that are still informed by the ethos of traditional jazz and popular songs. That legacy is not a root language for Léandre and her pianist partners -- Masahiko Satoh on disc one and Yuji Takahashi on disc two. Want another indication? Besides the three standards he limns here, all of the pieces played on Scianni’s CD have interpretive titles which give them a resonance and attachment beyond the music. The 14 tracks on Léandre’s two-CD set merely use letters or numbers reflecting the concept of “pure music”. The pieces exist on their own without external references.

Probably the clearest indication of this separation comes on Gordon & Warren’s “Serenade in Blue”, a much lesser known ballad than Ellington’s “I Got It Bad” or the Gershwin’s “Someone to Watch Over Me”, which are also covered. Playing in a hesitant, off-centre manner, sort of how Thelonious Monk would approach tunes like this, Scianni introduces frequently repeated cadenzas and a touch of stride, referencing Monk’s background as well as the Great American Songbook. Still, no sooner does he get to the melody than he begins playing variations on it as a proper jazzman would.

Exercises in polyrhythm, as are Léandre’s improvisations, the remaining tunes with Filiano, who has worked with partners as different as multi-woodwind master Vinny Golia and trombonist Steve Swell, highlight simultaneous contradictory textures that arise as much from his command of the keyboard as the bassman’s arco buzzes. Scianni can express the melancholy feeling of a ballad merely by accenting certain octaves, sort of like a hip-modal Bill Evans. He can also create marauding high frequency fantasias that flash by as rapidly as Art Tatum’s later work. Throughout, nothing fazes Filiano.

Recorded three years earlier, the other tunes on Scianni’s CD feature bassist Onserud, who has played with saxophonist Mario Eneidi and saxman Siwula, another low profile musician who has pursued Free Jazz/improvised music for years out of the limelight. “Serengeti”, the almost 18-minute showpiece for the trio, begins with extended breathy saxophone vibratos that expand into multiphonics for a few minutes before the pianist introduces speedy, piano roll-like comping. The bassist sounds as if he’s scraping the wood from his instrument as Siwula constructs runs and trills ranging through the horn, but just missing interaction with the other instruments. When the pianist gathers his forces to produce what sounds like a summation crescendo, Onserud begins working away with his bow in those hard-to-reach spaces above the bridge, referencing both cello and double bass tones, while Siwula turns to tongue slapping mouth percussion. Ending with some squealing pig squeaks from the alto, Scianni’s accompaniment turns out to be both a coda and the recapitulation of the theme.

Don’t look for carefully elaborated themes on SIGNATURE, however. Interestingly -- but not surprisingly -- Léandre, who often records in duo with pianists, including Japanese stylists Kumi Wakao and Ryoji Hojito, appears to have a stronger rapport with Takahashi than Satoh.

It may be because Takahashi first came to prominence as an avant-garde composer and studied with Iannis Xenakis in the early 1960s. Since then he has created orchestral, operatic and computer music, utilized traditional instruments, performed Asian protest songs and played with artists including Musica Elettronica Viva and saxophonist/composer John Zorn.

A Berklee College grad, Satoh, has won local Jazz magazine awards and worked as an arranger and pianist with such well known Americans as bassist Eddie Gomez, drummer Steve Gadd and singers Helen Merrill and Nancy Wilson. He has written for TV, movies and large orchestras as well as touring overseas.

Insisting that her music is made up of non-repeated gestures, Léandre, who recorded with these two pianists on subsequent days, wonders if the result should be called new New jazz music rather than attaching it to either side of the musical fence. Certainly there’s enough going on in these accented exercises in polyrhythms to prompt a unique genre.

With Takahashi, the two seem to delight in changing the tonal centre. Sounds can be excessively clamorous or nearly inaudible. Over time, moreover it become clear that the pianist can call up many approaches, from ornate 19th century impressionism to somber, frigid 20th century serialism. He can start off playing what appears at first hearing to be a beginner’s piano exercise, only to open it up into fulsome improvisations. Then the bassist begins muddying the approach with lunges, snatches and constant bowing. If she stays at the bottom of her arco range, he creates high-pitched frequencies at the top of his. Should he play rubato, then she insists on being andante. If she bangs upon the bass strings with her bow, he produces counter motifs to frame her improvisations. All and all, though, the two often manage to connect, as he singles out the few perfect notes from his 88 keys that intersect with her fleet cello-like bowing.

Satoh’s presence on the other hand, seems to bring out the technicians in both musicians. He can turn out a frenzied, multi-note near parody of Cecil Taylor’s mature style as easily as she can bow more and more quickly and sometimes advance into full screech mode. Within their tunes there are spectacular examples of double and triple stopping, though most of the time she can hit the highest portion of the scale without causing ear discomfort. Léandre can also knit string buzzes into a coherent whole.

Despite his jazz background, however, it’s the pianist who sometimes gets fussily classical here. Is that a snatch of Beethoven that sneaks out during one exchange? Still because they’re in unison more often then in opposition, the performance between the two does flow. In fact, it flows enough so that at one point Satoh lets out a short yelp of excitement.

The only question remaining about these CDs is with the packaging. Since both discs add up to a little more than 65 minutes of music, why not put them on one platter instead of two?

Yet that’s an extra-musical consideration. As all the tunes on both Léandre CDs are named signature it seems obvious that personal signature has been musically written on all of them. This is the sort of sound she likes to play and in which she excels. Similarly, Scianni pianistically signs his name to his creations.

As different as possible within the same format, both CDs assuredly define the piano-bass duo genre.

---Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Glenn Miller Days. 2. Bordeaux Autumn* 3. Serenade in Blue 4. Weep Quietly 5. Khyber Pass 6. I Got It bad 7. One-Eyed Jack 8. Serengeti* 9. Someone to Watch Over Me

Personnel: Blaise Siwula (alto saxophone)*; Joseph Scianni (piano); Ken Filiano (bass); Hal Onserud (bass)*

Track Listing: Disc One: 1. Signature 1 2. Signature 2 3. Signature 3 4. Signature 4 5. Signature 5 6. Signature 6 7. Signature 7 Disc Two: 1. Signature A 2. Signature B 3. Signature C 4. Signature D 5. Signature E 6. Signature F 7. Signature G

Personnel: Masahiko Satoh (piano [disc one]); Yuji Takahashi (piano [disc two]); Joëlle Léandre (bass)

February 3, 2003

JEROEN VAN VLIET

Red Sun
EWM 51172

COURVOISIER/LÉANDRE/IBARRA
Passagio
Intakt 075

Back in the pre-feminist 1950s, jazz critic Leonard Feather put together a “cats verses chicks” jam session. On it, an all-female band including vibist Terry Pollard and guitarist Mary Osborne went head to head with an equal number of male musicians including vibist Terry Gibbs and guitarist Tal Farlow, trading solos on such appropriate tunes as “Anything You Can Do … I Can Do Better”. The sentiment seemed to be that this would prove that women could play jazz just as well as men.

While subsequent and preceding decades have produced distaff jazzers as good or better than their male counterparts, the idea of comparing particular musicians as to gender seems as antiquated as concern about the racial make up of sports teams. As point of reference Swiss pianist Sylvie Courvoisier’s trio is all female, while Dutch pianist Jeroen Van Vliet and his associates all are male. Yet the differences between these two fine sessions have almost nothing to do with the gender of the participants. Very simply, any more antithetical approaches to a modern jazz piano trio session then these groups have found, are practically non-existent.

Van Vliet, who has been linchpin of bassist Eric van der Westen’s band since its formation in 1995, is an unabashed romantic, who has also written for dance and film. His third solo album, RED SUN, finds him smack-dab in the middle of the impressionist jazz tradition. But careful listening to the playing and writing here -- all the tunes but two miniatures are his -- reveals a chilly intelligence underneath the romance, sort of like an updated Paul Bley.

More experimental, PASSAGGIO, featuring three of the world’s most accomplished free improv practitioners. There’s Courvoisier, who often works with American violinist Mark Feldman as well as veterans such as Swiss drummer Lucas Niggli and American cellist Erik Friedlander; French bassist Joëlle Léandre, known as a paramount interpreter of the work of John Cage as well as an improviser with other master musicians such as British guitarist Derek Bailey and Swiss pianist Irène Schweizer; and American drummer Susie Ibarra, whose sound has been an important part of groups led by saxophonist John Zorn and David S. Ware and bassist William Parker.

Cast in the form of a suite, Van Vliet’s CD features a dozen compositions, and during the course of which he proves that attributes like beauty and delicacy are not exclusively feminine traits. There are times, however, that the pianist seems to be pacing himself to not press too firmly on the keys. Another weakness is that for all the passion expended, these tunes, which range from a little more than six minutes all the way down to barely one minute, appear to have been constructed with a POMO sensibility. That is, unlike, say, a 19th century tale which would sum up its message at the end, these compositions are more like 20th or 21st century short stories: many of them end without coming to a resolution. Perhaps, though, like New Criticism analysis which is concerned more with the words than their meaning, RED SUN should be seen as being affected by resonance and tone, rather than forward motion.

This is particularly noticeable on “I Never Said Goodbye”, which sounds more like a lullaby than a leave taking. Bassist Frans Van Der Hoeven, a fellow Netherlands native, who has played with everyone from American brassman Art Farmer to the Dutch Jazz Orchestra, has a carefully delineated solo here. But rather than challenging the treatment, he too sounds as if he’s carefully moving small butterfly specimens from glass case to case without upsetting anything.

“Glider”, one of those Pat Metheny/Bill Frisell-like country-flavored ballads, offers more of the same. Van Der Hoeven’s to-the-point solo appear to be limited to a few notes before he works his way back to the melody, which earlier had been defined from the piano’s highest keys. Even the title track is so slow moving that it’s barely there. The bassist seems to be merely tickling his instrument, while Belgian drummer Dré Pallemaerts is reduced to being a mere colorist with minute snare smacks and tiny cymbal reverberations on his palate. This probably reminded him of his New York period playing with American pianist Fred Hersch, but one would think he had a larger role as part of Belgium guitarist Philip Catherine’s group and the Brussels Jazz Orchestra.

Although there are times you feel like slipping the three an alarm clock to wake them up during some of the almost motionless passages, that near stasis is obviously the group’s chosen style, although the most memorable tunes here seem to be those which swing -- albeit sensitively-- rather than only setting moods.

On “Derwisj”, the disc’s longest piece, a mid-tempo ballad, the three have created something that sounds instantly familiar and which is helped by the impeccable recording done in Oslo by ECM’s favorite engineer. Van Vliet at one point unveils a small flurry of notes and at another creates some double timing arpeggios. Pallemaerts responds with some light cross sticking, though that then causes the pianist to stop himself, as if he was getting too showy.

Finally there’s “Solid Air”, an out-and-out swinger. While the pianist still suggests Evans’ work on KIND OF BLUE, at least he’s using the entire keyboard -- sometimes ostentatiously so. Van der Hoeven double times and the drummer plays his best solo of the date as well, roaming the kit for snare rolls, cymbal scratches and a steady tom tom beat -- though he does it too in a definitely unpretentious manner.

Moving from Oslo to Zürich, Switzerland, we find 12 instant compositions performed by three musicians unlike any others. Although the burlesque trappings of some of Léandre’s more vocal performances are missing, the three seem to be having a grand time. There’s no overt humor, but neither is there the sombreness that intentionally or not, Van Vliet & Co., appeared to portray. Definitely improvised music, many of the Courvoisier tracks begin with silence, as the three seem to be discussing what they will be playing next.

As with many other session in which she’s featured, bassist Léandre could carry the entire performance by herself. During the course of these 51-odd minutes, she draws falsetto screeches from her instrument’s strings; scratches its wood, sides and pegs; strums it like a giant guitar; plucks it like a Dixielander’s bull fiddle; (wo) manhandles it so you can hear the wood reverberating as the strings pull; bows away as if she was replicating the sound of a swarm of insects; and offers up other arco legerdemain that transforms her four strings into that of an entire orchestral string section.

Not that the other two are far behind in inventiveness. Homegirl Courvoisier ‘s work ranges from producing speedy, restless, piano patterns to gliding over they keys with massed arpeggios and using implements and her hands to mute the keyboard action inside the piano. Other times she’ll stroke the internal strings as if they were really inside a harp and bang the sides and cover for additional percussive notes. Individual in approach, there’s still a point, almost at the end of the disc, when she and Ibarra duet like Max Roach and Cecil Taylor ranging hell bent for leather -- or wood -- over all parts of their respective instruments.

From her position, the drummer alternates between loudness and silence. Momentarily, she produces a ghostly cymbal continuum or what could be precious glass hit every so slightly. Then she’ll build up to a crescendo of tapping or knocking snare work that sounds as if she’s outside a door and wants in. Rattling chains, bells and tam tams, often a distinct Oriental gong reverberation will appear as well.

Military march time makes its appearance here, as does the closest thing to traditional jazz tempo on “Taktlos 2”. As Léandre moves from European classical harmonics to American country hoedown suggestions with a flick of her bow, Ibarra suddenly stops cross sticking on the drum rims and produces a deep Gene Krupa-like swing bass drum sound.

Nothing is done in isolation, of course. Never does it seem that one musician is the patriarchal leader and the others merely sidefolk. On “Mini Four”, for example, Courvoisier’s fleet passages at the top of her range are altered by Léandre’s arco pyrotechnics and Ibarra’s approximations of Aboriginal tambourine music. Soon all are in the forefront, improvising at the same level of loudness. “Taktlos 3” works that way as well, where straightforward swing from the piano and bop cymbal work moves in and out of standard time led by the bassist lacerating the highest part of her string set and the section behind the extended bridge. What results is music that is as outside, as it is inside.

At times, as well, the three are involved in such a cauldron of group improvisations that you’re not sure which instrument produces which sound, something that never happens on RED SUN.

Unabashed free improv fans, who want to experience the full range of a piano trio, should seek out PASSAGIO. Those whose tastes run more to quieter and less confrontational sounds will probably be more impressed by RED SUN.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Prologue 2. Like Fall 3. Still 4. Glider 5. Red Sun 6. Thaw 7. Solid Air

8. So Long, Brother 9. Oslo 10. Derwisj 11. I Never Said Goodbye 12. Epilogue

Personnel: Jeroen van Vliet (piano); Frans van der Hoeven (bass); Dré Pallemaerts (drums)

Track Listing: 1. Mini one 2. Mini two 3. Mini three 4. Mini four 5. Mini five 6. Taktlos encore 7. Taktlos 1 8. Taktlos 2 9. Taktlos 3 10. Fact one 11. Fact two 12. Fact three

Personnel: Sylvie Courvoisier (piano); Joëlle Léandre (bass); Susie Ibarra (drums)

September 30, 2002

LAZRO/ZINGARO/LÉANDRE/LOVENS

Madly You
Potlatch P102

Without exaggeration, this more than one-hour slab of free improvisation recorded live last year, features an object lesson in how to best express this subtle art. It’s particularly noteworthy because it shows that, unlike the hushed minimalism that characterizes the work of many younger improvisers, these seasoned pros aren’t afraid to express their craft at the volume it deserves.

However, even with the alto and baritone saxophone of France’s Daunik Lazro plus the percussion and musical saw (!) of Germany’s Paul Lovens the sounds don’t degenerate into blaring discord either. After all, Lovens, the master of selected and unselected percussion, has had a long relationship with folks like British saxophonist Evan Parker and German pianist Alexander von Schilppenbach who know their notes and timbres. While Lazro, who is probably -- undeservedly -- the least known of the four musicians here, has in the past matched wits with such sonic shamans as American multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee, Parker and American trombonist George Lewis. He also played with the final two improvisers here -- French bassist Joëlle Léandre and Portuguese violinist Carlos Zingaro as long ago as 1985.

Léandre, who also specializes in performing John Cage’s works, often played with Zingaro and Lovens in the 1990s, as well as with practically ever other improviser of note from British guitarist Derek Bailey to Swiss pianist Irène Schweizer. As multi- disciplinary as Léandre, Zingaro too moves back and forth between composed and improvised sounds, as well as music for theatre, film and dance.

With this combination of individual expertise, the four can divide and subdivide amoeba-like into a variety of combinations. Lazro and Lovens, for instance, can function as an Energy-music power duo; while Léandre and Zingaro can pretend to be a conventional string duo. Lazro, Léandre and Lovens can offer the sort of speedy, minute interactions possible in a sax-and-rhythm-section free improv trio; and classically trained Zingaro can soar as a solo violinist.

But there’s a lot more here. Some of the most interesting collaborations occur when the deeper tones of Lazro’s baritone mesh with busy low string tugs from Léandre’s bass. Other times, an entire birdcage of distinctive cries is unleashed when the saxophonist’s alto gets together with Zingaro’s high-pitched fiddle tones.

Individually, Léandre’s guttural throat cries and rolling vocal impersonations sometimes go up against screeching strings and perfectly timed bashes from Lovens’ kit; while at one point Lazro, alone on baritone, seems to be playing the head from Shirley Ellis’ 1960s hit, “The Name Game”. With a leaking hiss of baritone sound in the background, Lovens not only demonstrates how well music can just be made with unattached cymbals, but at one point goes the treatments crowd one better by doing this completely acoustically. During the CD’s second, shorter, instant composition, the whoops and miniscule cracks you hear sound as if they’re escaping from a souped up PowerBook. They’re not. It’s Lovens’ musical saw, with a sound as old as vaudeville.

Want to experience exceptional EuroImprov in all its glory? Go no further than MADLY YOU.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Madly you 2. Lyou mad

Personnel: Daunik Lazro (alto and baritone saxophones); Carlos Alves “Zingaro” (violin); Joëlle Léandre (bass, voice); Paul Lovens (percussion, musical saw)

June 29, 2002

KUMI WAKAO

John Cage: Sonatas and Interludes (1946-1948)
Mesostics MESCD-0011

JOËLLE LÉANDRE/ KUMI WAKAO
John Cage #4
Mesostics MESCD-0013

As music in the 21st century advances, it's becoming excessively clear that the conception of modern improv relies as much for new ideas on the ongoing, so-called classical music tradition as the initial African American continuum. Plus, increasingly, even fresher non-Western sounds are being appended.

That's what makes these two discs so fascinating. They're made up of performances of the music of American visionary composer John Cage (1912-1992), who made a point of abdicating the composer's omniscience. Instead, he insisted on the use of chance and the performer's interpretation of his unique scores for creation, something that linked him, despite his protestations, to improvisation.

As a matter of fact, the way pianist Kumi Wakao, a professed Cage admirer, interprets these tone mixtures sounds as much like contemporary improv as music produced by those who insist they're playing jazz. Yet there's an even more subversive subtext here. For Wakao, who performs on both discs, is Japanese. Thus, particularly on the SONATAS disc, made up of compositions for prepared piano, she's bringing a view of music shaped by studies and playing experiences in Japan, to sounds whose range of sonorities has often been compared to music of the Orient.

Appropriately enough, her partner-in-crime on #4 is French bassist Joëlle Léandre. Universally acclaimed as a Cage specialist since her student days, Léandre, has over the past 15years, collaborated with a variety of musicians from the jazz/improv side of the fence including guitarist Derek Bailey, pianists Irène Schweizer and Marilyn Crispell, saxophonist Mario Schiano and drummer Paul Lovens.

Although only involving two instrumentalists, it's appropriate that the first track of #4 is entitled "Concert for Piano and Orchestra". First of all, from the time of its invention, the piano, with its combination of string and percussive sounds, has always been considered a mini-orchestra. Second, due to the extended techniques Léandre brings to the double bass, her traditional instrument becomes a mini orchestra in itself. All together the end product is an enthralling symphony of carefully considering piano notes and touches, not only on the keys, but inside, where the plucked innards are made to respond like a harp or vibrate like a marimba. Meantime, when she's not wrenching the bass strings with Xena, Warrior Princess-like force, or ripping out a thunderous slice of arco, Léandre whistles and hums extra overtones. As to which musician produces the slide whistle reverberations or whinnies like a horse, gentlemanly manners preclude speculation.

Even more in her element on "Fontana Mix + Aria", the bassist exercises her voice as much as her fingers, playing along with the pre-selected tape sounds of buzzes, electronic whirrs, static, bells chiming and the like. Besides unleashing a pseudo-operatic soprano, she hums, laughs and hectors, often equaling the taped tones with her pseudo Satchmo-style voice or mumbled dialogue.

Following a pianistic run through of "One", which seems to take its shape as much from early Cecil Tayor as late Cage, the disc concludes with a ghostly short tune played on tuned water bottles by five musicians who appear to possess neither first names nor a presence before this.

In short, the session is an outstanding homage to the American composer and introduction to some of his works. So too is Wakao more than 64 minute solo piano performance of Cage's SONATAS, often thought of as greatest hits.

Although the composer's instructions for the positioning of the bolts, screws and other plastic and rubber objects was extremely precise, the pianist still manages to create a unique showcase of exotic miniatures ranging in length from less than two minutes to more than six. Sounding much of the time like she's playing a particularly precise toy piano or diminutive temple bells, her rhythmic sensibility and precise touch intensified the Orientalism of the studies -- to Western ears at least. With the recital taking place at different speeds and tempos, her interpretation often suggests subtle jazz rhymes rather than the stuffier, more precise, classical pitches.

Soothing as well as enervating, this disc would probably be the one to play for a keyboard loving friend whose appreciation of piano music ends at Bach … or Teddy Wilson

Although the simplest way to find either at the discs is at the label's Web page: http://www.d6.dion.ne.jp/~kwakao/, both are worth seeking out for New music followers, whether their alliance is to jazz or other improvised sounds.

-- Ken Waxman

Sonatas: Track Listing: [Sonatas and Interludes for Maro Ajemian] 1. Sonata 1 2. Sonata 2 3. Sonata 3 4. Sonata 4 5. First Interlude 6. Sonata 5 7. Sonata 6 8. Sonata 7 9. Sonata 8 10. Second Interlude 11. Third Interlude 12. Sonata 9 13. Sonata 10 14. Sonata 11 15. Sonata 12 16. Fourth Interlude 17. Sonata 13 18. Sonata 14 15 "Gemini"- After the Work by Richard Lippold 19. Sonata 16

Sonatas: Personnel: Kumi Wakao (prepared piano)

#4 Track Listing: 1.Concert for Piano and Orchestra, Solo for Piano, Solo for Bass 2.Fontana Mix + Aria 3. One 4. Five

#4 Personnel: Kumi Wakao (piano, prepared piano); Joëlle Léandre (bass, voice); H. Okabe, R. Numata, M. Uenari, D. Terauchi, T. Nishimura (glass bottles tuned with water)

November 5, 2001

JOËLLE LÉANDRE & RYOJI HOJITO

Sapporo Duets
Jazz'halo TS 013

Specializing in solo work, pianist Ryoji Hojito, 42, is one member of Japan's burgeoning improvisational music scene who is relatively unknown in the West. Committed to an expanded range of expression, he intertwines almost traditionally jazzy keyboard phrasing with irritating piano innards by introducing so-called prepared "little" instruments such as bells, rubber balls and squeeze toys to the strings.

Accomplished in diminutive, targeted gestures, he shines in these 10 succinct improvisations, recorded live in his hometown of Sapporo, located on the northernmost of Japans four main islands. Praise for a successful duo, of course, has to be shared with his associate, French bassist Joëlle Léandre, who is unquestionably comfortable in this format. Justly celebrated for her interpretation of New music as well as improv, over the years she has partnered such pianists as Italian Giorgio Occhipinti and Swiss Irène Schweizer, plus British guitarist Derek Bailey, Italian trombonist Sebi Tramontana and German accordionist Rüdiger Carl.

Despite the size of their respective instruments, Léandre is as committed to large movements as Hojito is to small ones. So, within the course of these instant compositions, she plugs the spaces left open from his playing and he does the same for hers. Using only hands, fingers, muscles and voice, Léandre is able to inject an impressive array of emotions into pieces like "4'36"". Scratching basso lines, she'll suddenly jump into the treble clef, or change her quiet, tongue rolling vocalizing to scat singing in a contrived, throaty Satchmo voice. Meantime the pianist is spending as much time squeezing plush toys and compressing notes from what sounds like an accordion or perhaps a chromatic harmonica as hitting the keys. Finally as his attack shifts from worrying, speedy New Thing clusters to a Spanish-tinged dance rhythm, the bassist comes out with some long loping pizzicato lines.

Other times, as on "6'38"", Hojito seems to have loaded his instrument with more hardware than Fred Van Hove, Denman Maroney and Burton Greene combined, to create an echoing mechanical pitch. As he moves from tonal clusters to steady pounding, Léandre extends her scratchy arco excursions.

Not that everything is unfamiliar. Hojito could be an impressionistic Bill Evans on the very straight sounding "6'10'" with Léandre as Scott LaFaro. Suddenly at one point though, an accordion's rumbling reverberations replaces the preceding small, nervous piano notes. She answers them with powerful bass bumps. Elsewhere, balls rolls along the piano innards while glissandos sound and little bells peal, while the four strings of the double bass do perfect imitations of a baroque violin or, more amazingly, a racing car accelerating.

In short, the participants in this duo recital prove that in the right hands, nearly everything sonic can be created with only acoustic instruments.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. 0'16" 2. 2'45" 3. 5'28" 4. 4'36"* 5. 4'36 6. 6'38' 7. 4'46" 8. 6'15" 9. 6'10"* 10. 2'49"

Personnel: Ryoji Hojito (piano, accordion*); Joëlle Léandre (bass)

October 29, 2001