Joëlle Léandre – A Woman’s Work (2016)

Personnel:
Joëlle Léandre: double bass, voice;
Evan Parker: tenor saxophone;
Jean-Luc Cappozzo: trumpet;
Agusti Fernandez: piano;
Iréne Schweizer: piano;
Fred Frith: guitar;
Mat Maneri: violin;
Zlatko Kaucic: drums, percussion;
Lauren Newton: voice;
Maggie Nicols: vocals.

How do you sum up the career of an improvising artist like Joëlle Léandre? Do you reissue a package of recordings from her 40 years of performance? That is probably not possible, given the multiple labels and the location and ownership of the masters. Besides, free improvisation, almost by definition, dissipates (or probably should dissipate) upon performance. Recordings contain only a fraction of the whole experience. When it comes to Léandre's oeuvre, total immersion in her music is the only way, apart from experiencing her perform, to get a sense of her presence on the bandstand. She is a performer who commands the same attention as her peers Peter Brötzmann, Joe McPhee, and Anthony Braxton. Born in Provence, she studied with John Cage, Morton Feldman, and Giacinto Scelsi. Her adoption of free improvised music found her in the company of Derek Bailey, Anthony Braxton, Lol Coxhill, and George Lewis. More importantly, she found her contemporaries in the bassists William Parker, Barry Guy, Barre Phillips, and Peter Kowald. Like her fellows who have had significant retrospective boxsets, Kowald's Discography (Jazzwerkstatt, 2014), and the documentation of Parker's early works Centering: Unreleased Early Recordings 1976-1987NoBusiness, 2012) and Solo Bass: Crumbling In The Shadows Is Fraulein Miller's Stale Cake (AUM/Centering, 2011), this 8-CD set allows for an immersion in Léandre's music. That is, at least her activities for the past 10 years. No collection could possibly embrace the depth of her career, especially the ephemeral nature that is improvised music. Caution. Stepping into this stream of her career is habit-forming and can lead the listener back-and-forth through her hundreds of recordings and four decades of performance. This set kicks off with a performance by the group Les Diaboliques, a trio of Léandre, British vocalist Maggie Nicols and Swiss pianist Iréne Schweizer. Their quarter of a century collaboration is part cabaret/part improvisation. This selection of their work comes from a concert in Moscow in 2015, and the trio's feminist leanings are one display. That is, if the listener harbors any doubts as to women's role in free improvisation, a genre historically dominated by men. Listening to the strength of Schweizer's playing (cue her solo on the untitled 5th track) eliminates any doubts as to her place among modern improvisers. Maybe it is not an issue these days, okay let's pray it is not an issue these days (as it might have been in the 1960s), for these three woman to take the stage at a Company Week or Freedom In The City series. Nicols' wordless vocals and Leandre's arco bow work speak a strange and beautiful new dialect. Disc two finds the bassist in a duo setting with violinist Mat Maneri. Recorded in Paris 2011, this is the first documentation of the pair in this setting. Together they recorded as the Judson Trio with Gerald Cleaver and The Stone Quartet with Roy Campbell and Marilyn Crispell. This two-stringed approach works well as both a gentle, alluring bowed meditation and a noisy scraping abrade-fest. Of all the discs included, this duo exhibits the greatest range between low and high ends. Maneri and Léandre developed into a perfect complement to so many artists of late, this duo begs for more performances. Disc three finds Léandre in company of American avant-garde vocalist Lauren Newton. Recorded in Besançon in 2016, the music swoops between a wordless new language and sung lyrics. Newton has the ability to imitate both the arco and pizzicato bowing techniques Léandre employs. Highlights here include the bassist joining Newton in vocals and also the final story of an old woman trying to coax a pig home from the market. Léandre's inexhaustible energy does create fatigue, though. It is best consumed in small doses over a long, enjoy-the-ride. --Mark Corrotto.

Les Diaboliques - Swiss pianist Irène Schweizer, Scottish vocalist (and occasional tap-dancer) Maggie Nicols and French double bass player-vocalist Joëlle Léandre - are the foremothers of the European school of free-improvisation. The three have been working together as a trio for more than 25 years, blending spontaneous improvisations with comic cabaret, throwing into this intense stew elements of South-African jazz, theatrical ploys, delirious humor and operatic tricks, all with a strong feminist and satirical edge. This live recording is from the first of two concerts that Les Diaboliques played at the DOM club in Moscow. This recording highlights the deep, intimate rapport and the extraordinary, telepathic interplay between these unique and resourceful musicians. It captures the true essence of Les Diaboliques - three highly individual masters, being totally themselves on stage, exploring their differences and their profound affinity, being witty, funny and inspiring. The trio opens and closes this performance with extended trio improvisations. Schweizer acts on these pieces as the responsible adult who accommodates the hysterical, theatrical games of Nicols and Léandre, including their amusing, gibberish vocalizations, cementing the wild, dramatic interplay with a perfect rhythmic timing and a straight, deadpan sensibility. Nicols and Léandre continue with two intense and highly emotional duets that shift fast between moods - sensual and surreal, energetic and eccentric, spoiled and child-like. The trio improvisation that follows is more contemplative and reserved - in Les Diaboliques terms - but it stresses the immediate manner that the trio move as a tight, perfect unity. Schweizer solo piano improvisation is a magnificent demonstration of her rich, nuanced language that embrace all the history of jazz, from rhythmic-bluesy phrases to more abstract, and open-ended improvisation. Simply excellent. --Eyal Hareuveni.