Jean-Marc Foltz - Legends Of The Fall (2017) [Hi-Res]

Partners on the scene for ten years, and both at the origin of the creation of the label Fugitive Vision which has already published their respective discs, the clarinet player Jean-Marc Foltz and the guitarist Philippe Mouratoglou concretize for the first time on record since Steady Rollin 'Man (Fugitive Vision 2012) - their tribute to the legendary Robert Johnson - a dialogue that has the elegance of completely reshuffling the cards of their game.

Familiar with the big differences, as at home in the post-romantic repertory, contemporary music as in the most adventurous jazz, Jean-Marc Foltz is a non-aligned multi-clarinettist, faithful to the pioneering approach of a Michel Portal, able to draw new beauties from Gershwin's repertoire ("Gershwin" / Vision Fugitive 2016).

Equally anxious not to freeze his musical gesture under a single banner, Philippe Mouratoglou has been able to impose his personality in the medium rather "traditional" of the classical guitar - his approach to Dowland, Britten or Brouwer testifies, just like his recent Schubert and Fauré's adaptation of melodies with soprano Ariane Wohlhuter ("Melodies and lieder" / Tròba Vox 2017) - while cultivating free improvisation on steel string guitar around strange and familiar soundscapes ( "Other valleys" / Fugitive Vision 2016).

"Legends of the Fall", distant and freely inspired by Jim Harrison's short story collection ("Legends of Autumn" / Laffont 1981), takes place in ten sequences, like so many travellings on fantasy landscapes, a fascinating dialogue between bass clarinet and guitar foiled by a learned use of alternative tunings, sometimes arbitrated by the lunar punctuation of percussion by Ramon Lopez, invited on four tracks. Music without number or identity, but not without memory, "Legends of the fall" weaves lines of force where would cross the scholarly polyphony of the lutenists of the Renaissance and the quick-silver song of Ornette Coleman, the imaginary folklore of Jimmy Giuffre and the literate folk of Joni Mitchell. At this degree of concentration, improvisation admits that it is also the first of the visual arts.