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Alban Darche: L’OrphiCube: Perception Instantanée
by Eyal Hareuveni
French, Nantes-based composer and saxophonist Alban Darche continues to explore the possibilities of transforming variable geometrical ideas inspired by cubist painter Robert Delaunay (1885-1941) as compositional tools for an improvising ensemble. Darche began this work with his nine-musician ensemble, L'OrphiCube (a term that refers the cubist art movement and a poem about Orpheus by poet Guillaume Apollinaire), on its self-titled debut last year (Pépin Et Plume, 2013). The L'OrphiCube ensemble operates with shifting variable geometry--six permanent ...
Continue ReadingJohn Hollenbeck / Alban Darche / Sébastien Boisseau / Samuel Blaser: J.A.S.S.
by Eyal Hareuveni
J.A.S.S. as in the first letters of the names of American drummer John hollenbeck, French saxophonist Alban Darche and double bassist Sébastien Boisseau and Swiss trombonist Samuel Blaser. But Jass also as the term used by the Original Dixieland Jass Band in March 1917 for the very first jazz-album recording or just the name of centuries-old popular card game in Switzerland and Austria. All of the above references relevant to this quartet who first played together ...
Continue ReadingMatthieu Donarier: Live Forms
by Jean-Marc Gelin
Matthieu Donarier presents his second album with his usual trio, following the widely acclaimed Optitopic in 2004. This new live album, recorded in Saint-Nazaire and Angers, once again showcases the strong intimacy between these three musicians, who have been playing together since their school years and their time at the CNSM. It is with them that Matthieu Donarier, known for his work in other ensembles (with Daniel Humair, Alban Darche, or Patrice Caratini), emerges as both a complete saxophonist and ...
Continue ReadingTriade: L'Ardu
by Matthew Wuethrich
JazzTimes writer Stuart Nicholson recently posited that appropriation has driven the development of jazz, for it draws on disparate musical sources to enrich its own vocabulary. This force has however been balanced with some constants that link one stage of development to another, and the most notable constant has been ensemble combinations. Of those combinations, perhaps no other has seen as much use as the acoustic piano trio. The French group Triade starts with such a traditional base, but they ...
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