Search - Leandre, Crispell, Lovens :: Joelle Leandre Project

This is improvised music for which the standard musical descriptors--and clichés--whether from jazz or elsewhere, just don't work. The French bassist's project creates pieces that have an uncanny shape, and that's something that occurs in this kind of free improvisation only when performers are the most skilled practitioners and have a high level of mutual intuitiveness and listening. Through thickets and clearings of unexpectable sound, the various voices of the group step forward. At a single moment, Marilyn Crispell's piano may dramatically roll in, and Paul Lovens may clatter expansively, drawing from a broad palette of scrabbling percussion. Carolos Zingaro (violin) and Richard Teitelbaum (keyboards, electronics) are the wildcards. The violinist squiggles into and under the ensemble sound, while Teitelbaum's electronics at times descend, skirling like primordial birds and gently warping the harmonies. This is, in fact, an all-star outing. Recorded live, as it was instantly composed, it garners the highest praise for freely improvised pieces; that, however far they reside from the safe havens of melody, they have inevitability on terms of their own. --Peter Monaghan