Joëlle Léandre: Lifetime Rebel

Joëlle Léandre is the definition of a force of nature. She is unstoppable, unforgettable, and full of boundless energy. It is the nature of her force that recordings like Lifetime Rebel attempt to capture. These four CDs—plus an interview and solo performance DVD—capture a moment, but just a moment of her inexhaustible spirit, before she moves on. Recorded in 2023, Léandre was honored with a lifetime achievement award during New York's Vision Festival. The performances captured are by diverse and interesting groups, without attempting to sum up the width and breadth of her career. That would be a near-impossible task.

Born in Aix-en-Provence, France, Léandre would study classical and contemporary music before having her head turned by such expatriate Amercians living in Paris in the late 1960s as Anthony Braxton, Roscoe Mitchell, Bill Dixon, and Frank Wright. Her liberation led to a residency in the United States and further investigations into John Cage, and Morton Feldman. She has seemingly always straddled the worlds of composition and improvisation, preferring to blur their distinctions and merge them into one vision. For Léandre, improvisation is composing; likewise composing is an exercise in freedom.

Founders of the Vision Festival, William Parker and Patricia Nicholson Parker have hosted Léandre on multiple occasions. Their 2023 festival was dedicated to the bassist's contributions to music and is a great place to start as an introduction to this creative icon. Adventurist listeners can find another 250 or more recordings from her discography to consume. The best starting place here is the interview video. She details her background and the forces that ignited her genius. Léandre credits the freedom and energy of American musicians and free jazz. She applied this energy to the European movement and, more importantly, to her vision. Her struggle as a woman in jazz, a woman at the upright bass and a woman as a bandleader was also a heavy charge. One she never shied away from.

Her struggles may best be exhibited in the Tiger Trio with flutist Nicole Mitchell and pianist Myra Melford. The three women have toured extensively and released two prior Rogueart discs Unleashed (2016) and Map Of Liberation (2019). Here, the three present six improvised performances as an equilateral triangle. In other words, this leaderless setup plays dynamic push-pull music, with each performer casting her ideas to be responded to and be commented upon. The free association here results in composition—instant—and exciting improvisations.

The same can be said of Léandre's trio,—dubbed the Roaring Three—with violist Mat Maneri and pianist Craig Taborn. While the bassist has a long-standing relationship with Maneri (in the Juson Trio and The Stone Quartet), she had only recorded one prior concert with Taborn hEARoes (RogueArt, 2023). This chamber jazz performance finds an instantaneous rapport between the three musicians. While Maneri and Léandre are two sides of the same coin, Taborn is the perfect complement to the string instruments.

Léandre's Atlantic Ave. Septet features a 42-minute composition by the bassist. Recorded at Auditorium Jean-Pierre Miquel in Vincennes, France with American-based musicians; Ingrid Laubrock, Steve Swell, Joe Morris, Jason Kao Hwang, Maneri and Fred Lonberg-Holm, the music branches out from the written score throughout, but always finds its way back, to deliver a coherent statement. Each musician is given space to express Léandre's principles of freedom, which emphasize internal logic and cohesion.

The final disc is a duo between Léandre and African American poet Fred Moten. The 20-minute performance begins with a roasting of documentarian Ken Burns and his rewriting of jazz history. In the tradition of Charles Mingus backing the poetry of Kenneth Patchen, Léandre's bowed and plucked accompaniment delivers her Amen to Moten's words and encourages the discourse. When she joins the poet in wordless song, there is an ancient bond formed between these two artists.