Links 'n' Things: February 28, 2025

Two two-bass hits from Joëlle Léandre and William Parker, and more...

Joëlle Léandre

Talking Taylor: At the end of January, I had a long and enjoyable conversation with Joe Maita, who runs the website Jerry Jazz Musician. He published the introduction to In The Brewing Luminous: The Life & Music of Cecil Taylor as a kind of appetizer, and now the main course has been served. You can read the complete transcript of our conversation now; we talk a lot about Taylor’s life and music, and about the book and how it evolved out of a much broader project that may be revived one day, and other subjects as well.

In The Brewing Luminous is available from Amazon, from Abebooks, or directly from Wolke Verlag.

Joëlle Léandre: One of the most exciting things about helping Leo Records get their catalog up on Bandcamp (here’s the link) has been discovering for myself some of the amazing music, and incredible musicians, they’ve been putting out into the world for more than four decades. As you’ve probably figured out if you’ve been following my writing and my various other projects for any length of time, I’m in this for the love of the music. And learning about some of the genuine legends of avant-garde improvised music in this way has really spun my head around.

One of the artists whose work has impressed me the most recently, and with whom I was not very familiar until recently, is French bassist and composer Joëlle Léandre. There are 16 of her Leo titles up on Bandcamp now, recorded in a variety of contexts in groups ranging from duos to a tentet. And I’ve been checking them out and finding her to be an utterly fascinating musician with a unique voice on her instrument. If you’re as unfamiliar with her as I was, two potential entry points are Contrabasses and Live At Dunois, twin live albums of duos with equally legendary bassist William Parker.

Their first encounter, Contrabasses, was recorded live at the Sons d’Hiver festival on January 9, 1998. It consists of four duo performances, and one solo from each player, adding up to about 53 minutes of music. And the contrast between them is astonishing, but at the same time they complement each other at all times. When Léandre (heard in the left speaker) is bowing, Parker (heard in the right speaker) will be plucking the strings furiously; when he explores the instrument’s upper register, sounding almost like a microtonal violinist, she creates croaking rumbles that sound like the floor is about to give way. And during the second duo, which you can hear above, Léandre sings in a passionate and almost frighteningly intense manner as she plays.

Live at Dunois was also recorded at the Sons d’Hiver Festival, a little over a decade later, on January 26, 2009. It, too, is divided into six parts, but this time there are no solo interludes — this is a pas de deux, with each player supporting the other. Léandre is more often the dominant voice, creating fascinating bowed melodies as Parker thumps and throbs behind her. He’s always been very comfortable leading from behind, whether serving as the glue keeping Cecil Taylor and Tony Oxley from flying away in the Feel Trio or laying down thick trance grooves with drummer Hamid Drake in Peter Brötzmann’s Die Like a Dog quartet. Here, he shadows Léandre as she bows and sings. Interestingly, on Contrabasses a passionate and enthused audience could be heard cheering both performers on, but on Live at Dunois any witnesses present remained silent until the end, making it a fascinatingly intense and focused listening experience.

Please head to Bandcamp and explore the music of Joëlle Léandre. There’s a lot to hear.

And now, the paywall! If you’re a paying subscriber, intriguing things await. Everyone else, we’ll meet back here next week.