A most beautiful and concise meditation by French baritone sax player Daunik Lazro and writer-musician-label owner Guillaume Belhomme on the formative roots of jazz and its influential heroes. On this 3" disc, 10 minutes long, recorded in the Jazz festival of Rouen, France, in 2011, Lazro reflects on some of the seminal compositions from legendary sax player Joe McPhee.
McPhee is a personal hero of Lazro and Belhomme. Lazro collaborated and recorded with McPhee, as a duo (Élan, Impulse, In Situ, 1991) and in expanded formats (the self-titled with Evan Parker, Vand'Oeuvre, 1996 and Next To You with Raymond Boni and Claude Tchamitchian, Emouvance, 2005).
Here he interprets the theme of McPhee's composition, "Vieux Carré", which refers to the French Quarter of New Orleans. The original composition was recorded by McPhee on his Graphics album in 1977 (HatHut) and later covered by Lazro in his solo baritone sax album, Some Other Zongs (Ayler, 2011). McPhee dedicated it to Steve Lacy's abstraction of New Orleans reed pioneer Sidney Bechet. Lazro add a short interpretation of the theme of "Everything Happens for a Reason," from McPhee's album with the same title (Roratorio, 2005). Lazro realization is contemplative, touching and highly melodic, rich and warm in its sound and makes full use of the resonating space. The work of a true master.
This release comes in a small book featuring Belhomme's own fragmented reflections (all in French) on the art of McPhee and Lazro.
2 comments:
A three inch CD. It's years since I last saw one of those. Indeed, I wonder if more recent players are able to play it, such as slot loaders. Presumably so.
Great piece of music, I guess Lazro is one of McPhee's hero too !
Post a Comment