Jazz Articles about Michel Lambert

Michel Lambert: Alom Mola

by John Eyles
May 10, 2017

Michel Lambert is probably best known as a jazz and improvising drummer, most familiar from his recordings with fellow Canadian and saxophonist François Carrier, made since the turn of the millennium. However, there are other sides to Lambert that are not immediately obvious from that work. He has released several albums of his own compositions on the Jazz from Rant label that he founded in the early 90's with his wife Jeanette Lambert and her brother Reg Schwager, the label ...

François Carrier - Michael Lambert - Jean-Jacques Avenel: Within

by AAJ Italy Staff
January 13, 2009

Delle svariate fisionomie che l'improvvisazione radicale può assumere, quella rappresentata da questo trio francese, registrato al Jazz Festival di Calgary nel giugno 2007, è una delle più toniche e discorsive, rimanendo ancora ben radicata nel free jazz. La musica dei tre lunghi brani, a firma congiunta come la titolarità del CD, si evolve con fluida continuità, con un solido senso narrativo e con una variata concezione della sonorità, tentando di materializzare di volta in volta diverse atmosfere. Un precedente illustre, ...

Francois Carrier - Michel Lambert: Kathmandu

by AAJ Italy Staff
January 31, 2008

Kathmandu è il resoconto di una settimana di incontri, di amicizie, di sorprese, di colori, di profumi, e, naturalmente, di suoni che il sassofonista Francois Carrier e il batterista Michel Lambert hanno avuto modo di registrare nella capitale nepalese durante la quinta edizione del Jazzmandu Festival. Tra i principali esponenti della scena improvvisativa canadese, i due musicisti e amici di lunga data, scelgono la strada di undici improvvisazioni di medio-breve durata, proprio per esprimere il grande ventaglio di emozioni creato ...

Michel Lambert: Le Passant (The Wanderer)

by Troy Collins
January 19, 2006

Montreal-based and conservatory-trained percussionist Michel Lambert conceived the suite on Le Passant as a conceptual conflict, pitting a chamber orchestra against a small group of jazz improvisers. In the liner notes Lambert describes the piece as more struggle than collaboration, an argument as opposed to discussion, improvisation versus composition.

The first half of the recording embodies this aesthetic at its most combative, with the improvisers weaving in and out of the massed ensemble. Sometimes they struggle to be ...

Michel Lambert: Le Passant (The Wanderer)

by John Kelman
December 16, 2005

The usual meeting place of improvisation and orchestra works around firm structure where the improvisers solo within the rigid confines of the orchestral arrangements, or the orchestra acts as an underlying support, scored in and around pre-existing extemporization. But in rare cases, daring composers have found ways to allow improvisers to remain untethered while at the same time broadening the sonic palette with a larger ensemble. Howard Shore's collaborative soundtrack with Ornette Coleman for David Cronenberg's film Naked Lunch was ...

Michel Lambert: Le Passant (The Wanderer)

by Jerry D'Souza
December 9, 2005

Michel Lambert began working on the music on Le Passant (The Wanderer) in 1992. Time, however, brought about changes. He reduced his original symphonic work to its current instrumentation. He calls it a meeting of the two forces and a confrontation between music that is through-composed and freely improvised. The latter is seen in complete detail on the last seven pieces, which are improv-based. The first five (together comprising “Le Passant") have the improvisers and the orchestra meeting and finding ...

Michel Lambert: Out Twice

by AAJ Staff
May 25, 2003

With the advent of free improvisation--or spontaneous composition, as some prefer to call it--formal structure ceased to be a fence so much as a path. But no matter how hard some improvisers may have tried, the random walk just never became reality. So that path has taken a central importance in defining the styles that shape free improvisation today.

Québécois-cum-world-traveler Michel Lambert's path on Out Twice depends upon interpreting images, an idea many have explored but few have managed to ...