Trio X - The Train & The River (CIMP, 2008) -- DVD

I've just watched this new DVD on CIMP, bringing a documentary on Trio X's performance in Vilnius, Lithuania in 2006. The documentary consists of interviews, mostly with McPhee and Duval, and some insights by Jay Rosen at the end, interspersed with footage of the performance and very colorful images of trains, tracks, rivers and a "lonely woman" character. The title "The Train And The River" refers to the Jimmy Giuffre song, but has to be seen here as symbolical, with "the train" standing for the journey of being on the road, but also of musical travels and "the river" symbolising life itself. The documentary is nice, and it's great to hear musicians speak about their art. McPhee speaks about his youth and influences, about musical classification (terms such as "free jazz" and "avant-garde" don't mean anything), about spiritualism and romanticism. Yet the music is of course the most interesting part. And the few fragments (but fragments only!) are astonishingly good, with the band playing its recent playlist, including their variation on My Funny Valentine, of God Bless The Child and of Coleman's Lonely Woman. It's really too bad that CIMP did not profit from the occasion to do the same thing as RogueArt did with the Peter Kowald documentary : to release the DVD together with the CD. I know I have this special favoritism for "Lonely Woman", but McPhee's rendition is among the most beautiful and most sensitive to be heard. It would be a shame to keep it to these few snippets on the documentary without making the full version available (true : also to be found on "Playing With The Elements" and on "Roulette At Location One", but not as powerful as here). The appetites are wet, the hunger remains...

Watch video excerpt on the Trio X website.