Fou

January 1984. As your darling reviewer was living his life’s best year – school finished six months prior, stint in the Italian army still to come, everything simply perfect in total “I-do-what-I-want” mode – three big names of improvisation were already at work to establish priorities and levels in the “acoustic freedom” category. Heterodoxy of timbres, vivid intelligence and communal intuitiveness made sure that, on a winter evening in Paris, Lazro (alto sax), Léandre (double bass and voice) and Lewis (trumpet and toys) would manufacture something special. That “something” is finally documented in its entirety in this exquisite release, of which about 20 minutes had appeared on Lazro’s double LP Sweet Zee (HatART), published six years prior.

So, once again we’re trying and distinguish between people born with a gift and peddlers of virtues that do not exist at all. For starters, this trio all but ignored the meaning of “inertia”. In varying combinations, they merely opened the arms and let the energies of instantaneous reaction flow through the bodies. The sounds are positioned with committed precision in spite of their spontaneous generation; a sensible improviser always know when it’s time to speak, to remain mute, or just to laugh at the surrounding events while keeping up with the ongoing currents. Naturally, this is not enough to produce entertaining music. Most of all, what’s needed in such a context is the capacity of portraying diverse realities in the space of instants. Lazro’s resolute discharges transmit a sense of passionate animation; Léandre’s mixing of powerful technique and ironic poetry has become a trademark over the decades; Lewis’ unusual utterances and joyful chatter complement the interplay with a cross of indiscipline and fluidity. The magic lies in the impeccable proportions of the resulting materials, invaluable segments of “here and now” counterpoint permeated with spectacular clarity and not a little fun. A temporary relief, if you will, for those who crave a universal resurrection via sheer sonic liveliness. Count me among them, steadily dwindling hopes notwithstanding. Or call the ambulance, and prepare the straitjacket.

Sophie Agnel + Daunik Lazro
Marguerite D'Or Pâle
Fou Records FR CD 21

Daunik Lazro + Joëlle Léandre + George Lewis
Enfances à Dunois le 8 janvier 1984
Fou Records FR CD 18

Evan Parker + Daunik Lazro + Joe McPhee
Seven Pieces: Live at Willisau 1995
Clean Feed CF397CD

French saxophonist Daunik Lazro has been a key figure in European free jazz and improvised music for forty years. These three recent releases demonstrate the quality of his work in different contexts over the past thirty years, as well as touching on shifting approaches in the music.

Enfances à Dunois le 8 janvier 1984 presents Lazro, exclusively on alto, along with Joëlle Léandre (on bass and vocals) and George Lewis (on trombone and toys) in a series of duos and triosthat are at once provocative and playful in the extreme, at times with the effect of radio dial twirling. 21 minutes of this 57-minute performance was released in 1985 as part of Lazro’s two-LP set Sweet Zee on HatHut (the other sessions had an international cast that included American cellist Tristan Honsinger, Japanese trumpeter Toshinori Kondo and Portuguese violinist Carlos Zingaro). The restored concert gives a view of the music’s depths as well as its variety.

The performance’s brief events present musics of radically different shape. “Enfances 2” has Léandre practicing a kind of sprechgesang; after a few seconds of initial orientation, “Enfances 3” passes through a free-bop phase of light alto and trombone then goes on to other dimensions. Each piece is an explosion of different textures: there are different vocal and verbal intrusions, whether poetic or operatic; a whistling saxophone and chanson find momentary unison; bass sounds range from factory-noises to concert hall cello or violin elegance; trombone events range from trumpet register to gastric noise; sounds that suggest unlisted instruments (e.g. alto clarinet) occasionally arise.

The long segments – “Enfance 5” stretches to nearly 20 minutes – are both Dadaist playground and psychodrama in which any sonic event, including near-silence, is possible, and none is more likely than another, whether it’s Lazro’s soaring, Ayler-inspired melodies and choked whistles or Lewis’s speech-like muted episodes. In one particularly fine moment, Léandre supports a Lewis trombone oration with bowed walking bass (a creative feat as well as a technical one); elsewhere, Lewis lends a duck-quack mouthpiece obbligato to a pensive Lazro interlude. “Enfance 6” features the trio’s most sustained creative interaction, dense play that begins with Lazro and Lewis in duet to be eventually joined by Léandre supplying further forward momentum.

Seven Pieces: Live at Willisau 1995 documents a fine trio of three saxophonists who are also contemporaries – Lazro (born 1945), Evan Parker (1944) and Joe McPhee (1939). In 1996, material from the same tour was released eponymously on the Vand'Oeuvre label. The new release comes from a recently discovered cassette. If improvised music has at times suffered a certain surfeit of saxophones, the three heard here are models of taste and invention, consistently varying dynamics and approaches.

If the lineage of Ayler and Coltrane is inevitable, it’s entirely positive here, as in the cascading finale of “To Rush at the Wind” with Parker on tenor, Lazro on alto and McPhee on pocket trumpet. The Ellingtonian roots are less expected. The trio is at its lightest on the opening “Echoes of Memory,” emphasizing higher pitched horns – Parker and McPhee’s sopranos and Lazro’s alto. The dovetailing lines reveal consistent close listening, with lines frequently gathering in concluding unisons. Those Ellington suggestions are picked up with greater insistence later. On “Broadway Limited,” the extreme upper registers of Parker and McPhee’s soprano’s eventually give way to Lazro’s rough-hewn baritone, The finest of these moments is “Concertino in Blue”: it begins with Parker on tenor and McPhee on alto clarinet using circular breathing to play drones at the threshold of hearing, while Lazro creates a rich, lyric tapestry with his baritone’s lower register, a contemporary equivalent of Harry Carney.

The joy of this trio is that there’s a kind of excess of real contrapuntal content. It’s still densely musical when members lay out, whether it’s for a tenor/alto duet by Parker and Lazro (the two somehow suggesting a third voice) or Parker playing a characteristic soprano solo in which harmonics and lines multiply to create a choir of one. Recorded little more than a decade after the iconoclastic Enfances, Seven Pieces seems to reimagine traditions.

Marguerite d'Or Pâle (the CD invokes Mikhail Bulgakov’s wondrously strange The Master and Margarita) documents a Moscow concert from June 2016. It’s an intimate improvised study in concentrated listening and focused sonic gestures. Lazro plays baritone and tenor here, while Sophie Agnel gives as much attention to the piano’s interior and strings as she does the keyboard. While Lazro combines voice and embouchure to press isolated cries from his horns, seemingly seeking the instrument’s most authentic voice, Agnel strikes piano bass strings covered with multiple vibrating materials or creates bell-like chimes on the instrument’s frame. Sudden slashes of piano strings lacerate the air; in another moment, a saxophone sound will contort into speech. Occasionally the duo will opt for high-speed synchronicity (“Bbystro!”), but it’s in the unheard resource, the fresh gesture, the muffled or muted complaint that they reveal the intensity and invention of their collaboration. The final episode “Ochi Chornye” is music of continuous change, including a passage of Agnel constructing ostinatos made up wholly of distinct sounds to accompany Lazro’s free exploration of ancient jazz romance (Ben Webster comes to mind) before he concludes with a juddering, multiphonic roar.

Lazro is as much the dedicated explorer today as he was decades ago, at once maintaining focus and challenging expectations, creating music that’s both vivid and individualistic. His work is well worth seeking out.
–Stuart Broomer