Jazz and Improvised

Purposing the Air
Ingrid Laubrock
Pyroclastic Records PR38/39 (ingrid-laubrock.bandcamp.com/album/purposing-the-air)

Music is poetic, poetry is musical, theirs is a magical marriage when it happens. Ingrid Laubrock personifies this alchemy, but also shows that there is immense beauty and depth to be found in small things. On one hand, familiarizing oneself with the source text here – Erica Hunt’s Mood Librarian – would greatly enhance its sense of proximity and connection to Laubrock’s piece. On the other hand, there is something to be said for moving in the opposite direction, short-circuiting orderly chronologies, escaping the page before again setting foot squarely within its perimeter. This work’s library defies chronology, it is not a curation of order and sequential notions, but rather of words that cater to the expressive tendencies of improviser pairings, with four singers interacting with either cello, piano, electric guitar or violin. 

These duos range from those playing together for the very first time to pairs established enough to have their own name (Duo Cortona), which is a fascinating spectrum in a vacuum but in practice it is striking how imperceptible these differences are. Beyond responding to Laubrock’s compositional outlines, the musicians allow each word of Hunt’s koans their own space to embody fullness, leaving room for boundless rendering of feeling. There is so much feeling in fact, that it is all too easy to overlook that for each koan only about two lines are being read. Every voice is an instrument and every instrument a voice. Trajectories are charted, but the intersecting currents influence them just as palpably.

Déjà vu
Carlos Jimenez; Alexandre Cote; Pierre Francois; Dave Watts; Alain Bourgeois
CAJ Music CD005 (carlosjimenez1.bandcamp.com/album/d-j-vu)

What we are looking at is a rollicking album of eight songs written in the style of contrafacts (new pieces based on the chord changes of existing works). Its many styles include forays into jazz, folk, Berlin cabaret, Middle Eastern and chamber music of the post-serialist 20th century conservatoire. But to describe it as such gives the impression of overcooking when in fact the whole project is a masterpiece of subtlety.

Carlos Jiménez’s take on the spacy and the cool rippling horn-like tones from his guitar summon woodwind-like tones from Alexandre Côté’s alto saxophone which, along with Pierre François’ piano, Dave Waltz’s rumbling bass, and Alain Bourgeois’ world of drums, makes for something magically different. This is the contrafact-world of Carlos Jiménez’s Déjà vu. The performers’ long-limbed dreamworld of narratives crafted into glassy sheets of harmonic soundscapes with earthy melodies and rolling rhythms lift up these songs to elevated heights.

Jiménez pilots a tall ship that navigates deep and shallow waters. He rings in the moods and changes with compositions and improvisation; he dashes his music into rocks, breaks free and glides rippling through Deep Blue ink-black seas, with a Look At The Stars in a brave new sound world all his own.

Fiat Lux
René Lussier; Robbie Kuster
Microcidi 044 (renelussier.bandcamp.com/album/fiat-lux-2025)

Listen to any two tunes on this14-track disc by Montreal experimental guitarist René Lussier and you’ll understand why he’s now celebrating a half-century career. Backed by Swiss-born Montreal percussionist Robbie Kuster, Lussier, who also plays electric bass and daxophone (an electric wooden experimental musical instrument) and Kuster, who varies his percussion thrashing with hand saw whines and nail organ vibrations, bound from style to style with the same sophistication and energy.

The guitarist’s shaking flanges and fuzz tones brush up against drum pounding on Rock 66. Rien d’aquis mates Kuster’s patterning clips with simple reflective string picking; while La Valise Du Vendredi is a Québécois blues, featuring garbled mumbles and perfect bottleneck frails. Lussier even uses the wooden daxophone’s gaunt voice-like drones to scrape alongside saw reverb replicating the sounds suggested by Guimbarde Et Brosse à Dents.   

Fiat Lux isn’t all fun and games. Some of the other Lussier originals mark his POMO conversions that add C&W licks to an otherwise understated improv melody or use primitive whistling to humanize what stands out as a heavy metal attack.

Unbeatable technique mixed with humour also turns French folk composer Albert Larrieu’s Biscuit – La Feuille D’Érable into a Rock anthem with guitar feedback; and he uses simple harmonies to break down Ornette Coleman’s Haven’t Been Where I Left into a progressive child’s song with chiming guitar runs and zipping single notes. 

There may be some music Lussier can’t distinctively transform, but it’s not here.

Cory Weeds meets Jerry Weldon
Cory Weeds; Jerry Weldon
Cellar Music CMF102704 (coryweeds.bandcamp.com/album/cory-weeds-meets-jerry-weldon)

In a fast-paced world where we are constantly bombarded and pressured to keep up with the latest trends and objects, renowned saxophonist and bandleader Cory Weeds’ latest release is a reminder to slow our pace down and “stop and smell the roses,” if you will. The album harks back to the classic swing era with a fresh twist, embodying the idea of honouring the classics in an era where “newness” constantly wants to take over. Weeds has gathered a group of famed musicians for these recordings, namely fellow tenor saxophonist Jerry Weldon, pianist Miles Black, bassist John Lee and drummer Jesse Cahill. 

What captures the attention of the listener right from the first note are the dual saxophone lines, a unique aspect of the album that pays tribute to “seminal tenor-battle recordings of the past.” The record starts off with the tune Hey Lock, where the listener is treated to a driving drum rhythm, swinging piano chords and the intertwining tenor melodies of Weeds and Weldon. Taking the tempo down for Just As Though You Were Here, a well-known tune by jazz pianist John Benson Brooks, the lyrical and mellow qualities of Weeds’ skilled playing are showcased. The album features a collection of jazz greats, ending with the bandleader’s own composition 323 Shuter. 

A perfect accompaniment for soon to be chillier fall days, this is a worthy addition to any jazz aficionado’s collection.