Eve Risser Red Desert Orchestra: Eurythmia

Welcome to the jungle. Composer, pianist, and orchestra leader Eve Risser sends us greetings from the wilds. It is this forest she has been exploring with European and West African musicians. Her expedition is a hypnotic journey dense with percussive attacks and mesmeric states.

The twelve piece Red Desert Orchestra is an extension of Risser's White Desert Orchestra, which gave us Les Deux Versants Se Regardent (Clean Feed, 2016). Here the influence of her Malian musicians is quite pronounced, with the additions of the balafon, djembe and bara percussive instruments. Risser fused the customs of European orchestral sounds with the rhythms of West Africa without diminishing either tradition. The wilderness of Eurythmia is Africa, Europe, and if you press you ear to the ground, your own backyard. The hypnotic pulse of "So (Horse In Bambara)" is populated by pops and beeps of synthesizers and an electric guitar that is accented by trumpet, trombone, and saxophone. The parade of percussion gives way to the gentle Risser piano-led "Sa (Snake In Bambara)" with Antonin-Tri Hoang's saxophone solo in dialogue. The music shares the same perspective as the Sun Ra Arkestra. "Soyayya" layers Ra's romanticism over a blanket of percussion, and "Gämse (Chamois In German)" applies the same kind of orchestral surge. While the impulse here comes from European jazz and West African music, the sound is inescapably universal.