Picking up from flutist Sylvaine Helary's 2015 Ayler release "Spring Roll/Printemps", this evolved album of chamber jazz performed with Hugues Mayot on saxophone & clarinet, Antonin Rayon on piano & Moog, Sylvain Lemetre on vibes & percussions, and Kris Davis on piano, presents sophisticated compositions from Helary, Davis, Rayon Dan Blake, and Matt Mitchell.
Format: CD Condition: New Released: 2019 Country: Portugal Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold Recorded in Moulins-sur-Ouanne, France on September 18th-21st, 2018, by Antonin Rayon and Anaelle Marsollier, except 3 and 4 recorded at the Sons d'Hiver Festival at Arcueil, on January 17th, 2017, by Jacques Laville.
"It's not the first time that contemporary classical music and jazz cross paths in a single project and it won't be the last, but this "Episodes" come with a singular condition: it's not something created under the umbrella of what we call Third Stream, that attempt to turn big band jazz a symphonic music, and it has very little of the mathematical properties of Anthony Braxton, even considering that the last piece, "Laggo", pays tribute to the tri-centric maestro and to Karlheinz Stockhausen.
Spring Roll, the ensemble led by French flutist Sylvaine Helary, has a timbral and theatrical perspective of chamber music born from the flute conceptions developed by 20th century composers like Debussy and Varese. And it also has an ambitious program of action: to improvise as if composing, and to compose as if improvising, here and there applying aspects taken from the traditional Asian musical cultures. They're "explorers in an unknown territory", as we read in the liner notes signed by Arnaud Merlin.
Helary herself and pianist Antonin Rayon are the ensemble composers, but for this opus they invited three extra contributors: from Canada, Kris Davis (who also plays piano in two tracks), and from the United States, Matt Mitchell and Dan Blake. The combination of these authorships go from extreme minimalism to epic blasts, the resulting interpretations seeming to re-invent this particular kind of fusion music. In one word: precious."-Clean Feed