Yves Léveillé: L’Échelle du Temps

Although he has yet to achieve substantial acclaim beyond his native Canada, Montreal-based pianist Yves Léveillé has made an accomplished series of albums going back to 1999 with Signal Commun, the first of several releases on Effendi Records. Léveillé's music possesses a strong jazz vocabulary, but the pianist also has an abiding classical temperament. A disc like Phare (Effendi, 2019) offers excellent post-bop jazz, utilizing a conventional quintet. But on L'Échelle du Temps, it's the classical spirit that prevails, with a string quartet and double bass complementing Léveillé's piano on his lyrical compositions.

The delicate opening of the title track indicates that the strings will play a pivotal role: they articulate the lush melody while Léveillé is content to provide gentle chordal accompaniment—until he takes over with a graceful solo. Then the strings again assert themselves as the piece transitions into a new motif, in a much more abstract vein, before the piece returns to its foundational melody. The strings are similarly out-front on "Le Réservoir," with Léveillé content to let his colleagues trace the piece's contours. And they are even more assertive on "Couleur Grenade," announcing the brisk-tempo theme with a darting urgency before Léveillé finally enters a third of the way through with a lovely series of arpeggios to launch an unaccompanied solo. Eventually he is joined by bassist Étienne Lafrance, who takes his own solo turn prior to the rest of the ensemble coming in to conclude the piece with a jaunty brio.

Lafrance serves as a pivot point for the album's shifts between classical and jazz idioms. His subtle swing enlivens "Missive," a lovely piece played largely as a duo with the pianist, and on "Encodage 2.0" he provides an invigorating, jazz-inflected solo that leads Léveillé into his own plucky solo turn, this time with the strings in support. "Une Journée Comme ça" may be an even better example of the way the music can bridge the genres. With a folk-like theme, played at a danceable tempo, the strings' intermittent pizzicato parts provide a rhythmic thrust and Lafrance adds his own dynamic interjections to give the piece its strolling momentum. The album never completely abandons its fundamental chamber-music sensibility, but the moments colored by its jazzier hues provide a lot of its appeal.

Léveillé's classical formalism may make it difficult for jazz purists to latch on to L'Échelle du Temps. The beauty of the music speaks for itself, however. It's a worthy addition to the pianist's catalogue, and hopefully one that will alter his status as one of Quebec's best-kept secrets.