Baron / Denzler / Guionnet / Rives

Propagations

Label: Potlatch Country: France

"I suppose one of the more daring things you can do nowadays is to form a saxophone quartet. Do you deal with the weight of history inherent in your horn or try to shrug it off? Or do you simply see what four saxophonists with a thorough understanding of what has transpired in the last decade or so of contemporary improvisation can do these days?

It sounds like the latter was the approach here. There's no indication of how the pieces were put together, though it sounds as if at least the basic attack was agreed upon beforehand (if not, all the more impressive). But whatever the case, it by and large works. The musicians (Marc Baron, alto; Bertrand Denzler, tenor; Jean-Luc Guionnet, alto; Stephane Rives, soprano) concoct three works ranging between about ten and seventeen minutes in length, allowing the ideas plenty of time to flourish. The first limns territory that one might have expected coming in: soft, grainy and generally high-pitched, long tones edged with spittle. That it's not so surprising doesn't at all mean it's in any way unenjoyable and this one is fine, very delicate in its balance of tones and the succession in and out of the sound field. The first portion of second track gives me a bit of a problem, essentially because a large proportion of the sounds are key pops and other plosives, elements that carry a wee bit too much of that baggage from prior generations of free reedists. Still, the mini-explosions are arrayed with care over fainter flutterings and breaths and when it splays out into its last half, the saxophones coming to resemble nothing so much as a wheezing harmonium, it's rather nice.

But the payoff is the final piece. Here, after several minutes of sour, whistling squeakiness, the quartet summons forth all the inherent richness in their axes; the harmonium is cast aside and the pipe organ appears and raises the roof. Massive slabs of pure reeditude-we're still talking drones, no screaming and screeching, just hugeness. The effect is liberating. Not so much in a cathartic manner as found in the finest of free jazz squalls, but more in the sense of a recognition that this capability, too, is in the saxophone and it's been too often ignored in recent years. Diving into their lower registers, the metal begins to vibrate and thrum. They split back out into various pitch levels, one (Denzler, I would guess), maintaining the stuttering bottom, perhaps Rives scratching the ceiling. It's a beautifully full performance, excellently structured. Good to hear that a format one might have guessed to be played out, isn't."-Brian Olewnick, Bagatellen

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