Trio Passeurs - Existences (Futura Marge, 2009) ****

 After Alexandra Grimal and Maguelone Vidal, Véronique Magdelenat is the third female French saxophonist that makes an album of value this year. Accompanied by Bernard Santacruz on bass and Christian Rollet on drums, she forms the Trio Passeurs. As Magdelenat writes in the liner notes, her music is about "energy, poetry and freedom, finding new forms, taking care of our souls, caressing our bodies, pulling our heart-strings, mixing the colors of life". Quite a program, yet delivered indeed with a right balance between energy and sensitivity. Only one track, "Petit Caillou", has a clear bluesy rhythmic and melodic pattern, while all the other pieces are more in the free improvised form, mostly downtempo, sometimes nervous, but mostly very subtle in the timbral explorations, even to the extent of negotiating emotional complexities in the hardly audible regions, or bringing full voice wails of agony or liberation of energetic tension. The trio works well together to create a single vision, and Magdelenat for sure a new voice to be reckoned with, especially if she can break away completely from form and structure, she's at her best.

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