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Joëlle Léandre - Urs Leimgruber - Fred Frith - Alvin Curran: Oakland/Lisboa
by John Sharpe
Under the moniker MMM Quartet a crew from diverse points of the compass assembled for a concert at the 2014 Jazz Em Agosto in Lisboa (Lisbon, Portugal). Three of the four principals have associations with Mills College in Oakland (the MMM acronym improbably stands for Mills Music Mafia), while the Swiss saxophonist Urs Leimgruber is the solitary interloper. With constituent parts like French bassist Joëlle Léandre, English guitarist Fred Frith and veteran American pianist, composer and electronics whizz Alvin Curran, ...
Continue ReadingLéandre - Delbecq - Houle: 14 rue Paul Forte, Paris
by Giuseppe Segala
Dice Kafka che “il libro deve essere un rompighiaccio, per spezzare il mare gelato dentro di noi." Questa musica è un rompighiaccio. Ma è anche un bisturi, una torcia, un occhio che esplora, un urlo. Una voce. Tre voci. Che si accostano, si ascoltano, si mescolano, si avvinghiano. Chi ascolta resta sospeso, colpito, stupito da tale forza immaginativa. Dal rigore e dal magistero di chi costruisce attraverso i suoni. Per saggiare la forza di questa musica bastano ...
Continue ReadingJoëlle Léandre - Urs Leimgruber - Fred Frith - Alvin Curran: Oakland/Lisboa
by Glenn Astarita
This multinational dream team's second album was recorded live at a venue in Lisbon, Portugal. MMM stands for Mills Music Mafia, alluding to the respective artists' tenure or residency at Mills College in Oakland, CA. As anticipated, the quartet embarks upon a course of ingenuity that would be difficult to top within global improvisational circuits. Indeed, active minds are on the loose here. They navigate through jarring pathways and even integrate off-center folk into a few choruses; whereas, ...
Continue ReadingLeandre - Delbecq - Houle: 14 rue Paul Forte, Paris
by Glenn Astarita
Leo Records' press release correlates this trio's output to “heavy artillery" music, but it's most assuredly not all about bombast or in-your-face type avant-garde improvisation. Hence, these esteemed improvisers do what they do best in front of a select audience in Paris. Bassist Joelle Léandre and Benoit Delbecq hail from France and like Canadian clarinetist Francois Houle, are among the crème de la crème of global improvisational artisans, and as anticipated, they dutifully get the job done here. The agenda ...
Continue ReadingBrda Contemporary Music Festival 2015
by Angelo Leonardi
Brda Contemporary Music Festival 2015 Smartno--Slovenia 10-12.09.2015 A Smartno in Slovenia, poco oltre il confine con l'Italia prospicente Cormons, si tiene da cinque anni un piccolo ma avvincente festival dedicato alla libera improvvisazione. La regione, chiamata Brda, è tanto suggestiva quanto quella del vicino Collio: un paesaggio di verdi colline che producono vini strepitosi e piccoli borghi medioevali. Il festival di Smartno nasce dalla collaborazione tra la Hisa Kulture -vivace centro culturale del ...
Continue ReadingDaunik Lazro / Joelle Leandre: Hasparren
by Glenn Astarita
This outing signifies the fifth recording and sole duo pairing by these consummate improvisers, spanning several decades. Recorded at a cultural center in Hasparren, France, the musicians explore the lower register with a profusion of prismatic contrasts as they interrogate and expand upon numerous schematics that at times, seem uncannily composed or sketched out prior to their summit. Of course, the album is totally improvised and the artists' striking intuitiveness is not surprising. The duo engages ...
Continue ReadingSudo Quartet: Live at Banlieue Bleue
by John Sharpe
Such is the strength and conviction with which the Sudo Quartet performs that thoughts immediately turn to how they developed such a cohesive group sound. With no liners and no information on the web, the genesis of the unit remains a mystery, though the same foursome feature on four tracks on bassist Joelle Leandre's At the Le Mans Jazz Festival (Leo, 2005). But when uniting four virtuoso stylists from the European free improvisation scene, it's a near certainty that their ...
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