Edelin, Michele Trio + Steve Lehman

Kuntu

Label: RogueArt Country: France

"Flutists' albums, in jazz, do not clutter up record stores. Michel Edelin is one of the (very) few jazz musicians, French on top of that, to have chosen the flute, in all its forms, as his exclusive instrument. For ages, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Eric Dophy, Jeremy Steig, James Newton, Dave Valentin and the likes have held a central position in his personal pantheon, he who was able to digest their teachings in order to feed his own syntax: a sound of a beautiful elegance, an angular phrasing where a propensity for melody and lyricism can be heard, a taste for certain instrumental audacities, the understanding of the collective...

Although originator to many groups with multiple orientations and designs, Michel Edelin does not pretend to be an "orchestra conductor" in the traditional sense, even if, in "Kuntu", he is the author to all the compositions (besides "Ruby My Dear", obviously, of which he renders a gentle and stripped version through an absolute solo on the bass flute). Hence, the trio he forms with Jean-Jacques Avenel and John Betsch incites more the idea of a perfectly equilateral triangle than that of a soloist "accompanied" (sic) by a rhythm section, as incomparable as it may be: supple, reactive, velvety, elastic. Hence a trio of soloists, a flute-bass-drums trio with no harmonic support, a configuration rarely used in jazz....

This album of a complete openness, breathing onto the melody, is collectively constructed in real time around pretext-themes with great rigor and a radiant imagination."-Gérard Rouy, excerpt from the liner notes