Bertrand Gauguet/John Tilbury

A two-CD set of separate live concerts, Contre-Courbes finds French alto saxophonist Bertrand Gauguet and British pianist John Tilbury languidly and leisurely exploring the intricacies of tonal refractions without losing constituent adhesion. Subtle and slow moving, the textures of each more-than-40 minute sequence is sometimes intermittent. Separated by silences they evolve in broken octaves rather than dual counterpoint, the better to appreciate the extensions from and tinctures of the sounded and implied notes. Both players follow dual careers in notated and improvised music. Gauguet is a composer of electronic music who has also played with innovators like Andrea Neumann, and Tilbury an interpreter of scores by among others, Cage and Feldman, is a member of AMM.

Filled with ghostly reed breaths and singular keyboard clinks, both concerts also include more pressurized motifs as when the saxophonist accelerates his output with foghorn-like overblowing and barbed split tones, while the pianist’s employs low-pitched pedal pressure, elevated high-note tickles and brief Arcadian patterns. Neither accompanists nor involved in setting up textural challengers, this separated strategy still maintains the quivering horizontal motion of the narratives. Distant during some sequences, harsh woody key pummeling as well as frenetic saxophone split tones are included in the tunes’ evolution(s). However the default is stillness with Gauguet often favoring vibrato-less propelling of dry air or touches of straight-ahead vibrations and Tilbury alternately providing formal chamber music-like arpeggios or chromatic patterns that are melodic enough to suggest delicate baroque outpourings. Keeping the tracks filled with surprises, these relaxed sequences are also short and are quickly replaced with challenging reed whistles and trembling piano glissandi. Quivering into an echoing connection at the end of the Festival Paysages concert for instance, horizontal patterns are maintained until both instruments lapse into silence, but not before a jagged reed yowl and echoing piano trembles personify the final sequence

Weaving a path between improvised and aleatoric timbres, Gauguet and Tilbury promulgate an idiosyncratic setting that doesn’t have to attain specific objectives, but impresses with unhurried evolution.

–Ken Waxman

Track Listing: CD 1: Live at Église Saint Maximin, Metz (France) CD 2: Live at Festival Paysages d’écoute at Les Quinconces – L’Espal scène nationale du Mans (France)

Personnel: Bertrand Gauguet (alto saxophone) and John Tilbury (piano)