"Sombre is an unlikely pairing yielding unexpected results. The classically trained harpist Helene Breschand meets the maverick avant rock guitarist Jean-Francois Pauvros. She plays an electro-acoustic harp, which -- unlike Zeena Parkin...

"The album title, Moment de Bonheur, is rather trite, but the concert was marvelous and the recording preserves all of its intensity and charm. This was a first meeting between Jean Derome (flutes, alto sax) and Louis Sclavis (clarinets...

"Even though Canadian saxophonist Paul Cram has led his orchestra for years, first in Toronto and then Halifax, Campin Out is the first recording by this ensemble since the 1987 LP Beyond Benghazi. One cannot accuse Cram of being too pr...

"Since the release of Sudori with his Sud Ensemble in 1995, Italian trumpeter Pino Minafra remained discreet as a leader, preferring to blend his voice among others in large-scale groups like the Italian Instabile Orchestra, Gianluigi T...

"Prior to the release of this CD, Mexican flutist/pianist Roberto Morales Manzanares was virtually unknown in North America. He met Japan-born violinist Mari Kimura when she played at Callejon del Ruido, a new music festival Manzanares ...

"Vancouver pianist Paul Plimley and his comrades, bassist Lisle Ellis and drummer Scott Amendola, have issued a tough little gem of a recording in Safe-Crackers. Plimley's pianism ranges in voice from fierce avant-garde improvisation to...

"The Hard Rubber Orchestra is a funkier incarnation of the NOW Orchestra. Led by trumpeter John Korsrud, it uses a similar pool of Vancouver musicians, although the instrumentation here focuses on brass and a rhythm section. Cruel Yet Fa...

"Recorded in studio in November 1996, Ben Goldberg's project Eight Phrases for Jefferson Rubin was his second composition for sextet (after Twelve Minor, released by Avant in 1998). Rubin, who died tragically at the age of 35, was one o...

"Three traditions, three musics? Hardly. This trio of improvisers -- Michel Doneda, soprano saxophone; Benat Achary, vocals, percussion; Kazue Sawai, koto -- forgoes all pretenses of speaking a universal language or separate ones, but i...

"This trio allies the spirited lightness of the Italian scene with the pastoral feel of the Swiss. Italian bassist Daniele Patumi and Swiss pianist John Wolf Brennan already played together in Pago Libre, an ensemble sharing a lot of af...

"When Gianni Gebbia performed with his trio Terra Arsa at the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville in May 1997, he was already well-established in the Italian new jazz scene. His style draws from Coltranian jazz, ...

"Music for Three Rivers presents four improvisations (totaling 45 minutes) from British pianist Chris Burn's performance at the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville in May 1996, as well as five studio recordings f...

"Recorded live at the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville in May 1996, In the Land of Milk and Honey features trombonist Anne-Marie Roelofs' Waste Watchers trio, which also features Johannes Krämer (electric ...

"In 1996, Thurston Moore was still mostly known for his work with the rock group Sonic Youth. In 1996, the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville was an established institution in the realm of serious experimental, ...

"Psycho-Acoustic is guitarist Elliott Sharp and harpist Zeena Parkins, and Blackburst is their first album together under that name (their first album was titled Psycho-Acoustic and simply credited to Sharp and Parkins). As with their f...

"Recorded live at the Victoriaville Festival in 1996, this disc features the Italian saxophone and improvisation master surrounded by a band from heaven -- or hell, depending on your view of modern free jazz -- ensuring his own "social s...

"Anamnesis: Ecumenical Mysteries was Yugoslavian saxophonist/composer Boris Kovac's first release out of Europe (on the Canadian label Disques Victo). It was also his first work recorded in Yugoslavia following the war that forced him t...

"Canadian baritone saxophonist Charles Papasoff has, with this recording, pulled off the heretofore unimaginable: pulled together a sextet comprised strictly of baritone players from Europe and North America and commissioned each member...

"Even for the avant-garde fan acquainted with the Far East Side Band's first CD, Caverns, Urban Archaeology cannot fail to surprise. The group's blend of Oriental and Occidental instruments and music forms provides quite a change of sce...

"Even though J.A. Deane has collaborated with many American avant-garde musicians, his solo albums are few. Sadly, his most accessible is also one of his less interesting. Nomad is an untypical release in the catalog of the label Disques...

"Sudori is, simply put, an avant-jazz rollercoaster with blues, Dixieland, circus music, and free improvisation all tumbling in your stomach with strong Italian herbs and spices. Trumpeter Pino Minafra is accompanied by his Sud Ensemble...

"Superb, simply superb, but also disorienting and disquieting: that's Happy Wretched Family, Non Credo's second album, seven years after Reluctant Hosts. The avant-pop format found on the first LP has evolved into twisted shards of pop ...

"The first completely solo Charles Gayle recording was recorded during a break in the Victoriaville Festival in 1994. Gayle went into a Montreal studio and played tenor on three tracks and bass clarinet on one, and preached while accomp...

"Elevations is one of the very rare albums on which bassist Lisle Ellis assumes leadership. It was recorded in a San Francisco studio in June 1993. At the core of the instrumentation is Ellis' quartet, which includes Christopher Cauley a...

"Recorded (and released) one year after Konrad Bauer's Disques Victo debut Toronto Tone, a solo-trombone-with-electronics affair, Three Wheels: Four Directions features his favorite trio at the time. Bauer, bassist Peter Kowald, and dru...

"Noir is one of Canadian pianist Paul Plimley's best trio sessions. It was recorded in a Montreal studio over two days in October 1992. Longtime partner Lisle Ellis is on bass, more recent encounter Gregg Bendian on drums, and saxophoni...

"When it was released in 1992, Toronto Töne was one of the first albums by trombonist Konrad Bauer to see the light of day outside Germany (West and/or East). This solo set was recorded live in Toronto in October 1991. Bauer's tromb...

"This set by longtime collaborators Dave Burrell and David Murray (playing exclusively tenor sax here) was recorded at the Victoriaville Festival in Quebec in 1991. The live sound is good, the performances exceptional (even by their sta...

"One of the greatest records to come out of Victo's (the record label of the Victoriaville Festival in Quebec) catalog is this 13-selection set by the Art Ensemble of Chicago multi-instrumentalist Roscoe Mitchell. Issued ion 1991, it co...

"To document the 1989 edition of the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville, the label Disques Victo released a compilation album -- a one-time project. Dix Improvisations Victoriaville 1989 culls short to medium-len...

"Taken from a 1987 solo date at Quebec's venerable Festival Musique Actuelle, Labyrinths finds avant garde jazz pianist Marilyn Crispell balancing Cecil Taylor's cataclysmic and staunchly free piano style with her own melodic and spacio...

"In October 1987, keyboardist/computer wiz Richard Teitelbaum and violinist Carlos Zingaro performed at the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville. The next year the label Disques Victo released The Sea Between, comp...