Quartet Noir - Lugano (2005)

Tracklist:
1. LUGANO Part I . . . . . . . 31’40”
2. LUGANO Part II . . . . . . . 6’ 06”
3. LUGANO Part III . . . . . . 12’39”

URS LEIMGRUBER : saxophones ténor et soprano
MARILYN CRISPELL : piano, percussion
JOËLLE LÉANDRE : contrebasse
FRITZ HAUSER : batterie

Somehow Urs Leimgruber has eluded me over the years. Lugano is my first exposure to his considerable reed work. I have to think we’re hearing a heavy sampling from his sonic palette here, given the tonal and timbral range displayed, a primer of multiphonics, squeals, smears, and rasps. Leimgruber’s lexicon of microsounds is at times unmistakably redolent of Evan Parker, however divergent their practices of self-editing and interaction.
The principal virtue of Lugano is the level of collaborative empathy honed by this crew. As Quartet Noir they extend back to 1999, with individual associations going back much further. There is a remarkable suppleness, fluidity and responsiveness between the four improvisers.
The long-form improvisation of the first track can be heard as cubist, an unimpeded flow of shifting conjunctions—duo/trio/briefly, quartet—organized around a sustained stillpoint. There is a strong whiff of high seriousness, even gravitas, across the length of Lugano, even during the short, high-spirited dance of track three.
Track one brings to mind the chamber works of Earle Brown, say Folio or his Music For Cello and Piano: episodes of hushed tension, whispery and restrained, a rather nice collective maintenance of low flame/medium intensity. Marilyn Crispell hangs lovely bell tones in the air, trills a la Feldman, detonates furious runs across the keyboard, and tolls somberly in the deepest register. Joëlle Léandre dives deep, chiseling notes from her bass, and floats ghostly arco sections just above the whisper stream of her collaborators.
It is actually only on the final piece that Quartet Noir heats things up, primarily as a pianoless trio, a ritual romp propelled by Fritz Hauser’s delightful drumming and Léandre’s urgent chanting. This is a brief flash of heat tamped down rather quickly to decay and dissolve into the inside of the piano and mallet strokes on cymbals: a hot episode in an extended conversation of rather chilly abstract noir.


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