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

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