LEIMGRUBER / WILLERS / CURRAN / SPERA - Rome-ing
LEO Records CD LR 872
Urs Leimgruber, soprano and tenor saxophones; Andreas Willers, electric guitar; Alvin Curran, piano and keyboards; Fabrizio Spera, drums, percussion
Recorded live at Casa del Jazz in Rome, Italy on Nov. 22, 2018.
The Leimgruber/Willers duo has worked closely for four years and thrives on reciprocal actions and influences between the two musicians. There is a looseness derived through a conceptual method of abstraction, from which creative process the structures and paraphrases of their music are achieved. This in turn avoids the clichés and superfluity of a music lacking in free dialogue.
The duo’s invited guests are percussionist Fabrizio Spera and pianist Alvin Curran. Spera has been an established member of Improv and Free Jazz communities for many years, while Curran has enjoyed a thoroughly progressive career in educating and composing in similar arenas.
The music is compiled in a shell of avant-garde jazz and free improvisation and is a mélange of traditional rhythms and sequences, with new ideas and inventions culling experimentations from free-ranging, technical skills. Here again we discover a circumstance in which the musicians explore the relationships between composition and improvisation, and they do so with a vengeance, the saxophones passionate and vital, hugely expressive. Audacious, hot piano chords invite inspired, sometimes chaotic responses from Spera, who seems to draw on the entire gamut of experimental and inspirational sounds available from his instruments.
The music shifts between moods, at once it seems switching between weighty and tranquil, grave and dark, expressive, measured and meditative. Yet still we find there is room for hysteria and passion, vibrancy and wit, which all-in-all adds up to a fine album of eclectic music with a unique and exhilarating sound.
Reviewed by Ken Cheetham
LEO Records CD LR 872
Urs Leimgruber, soprano and tenor saxophones; Andreas Willers, electric guitar; Alvin Curran, piano and keyboards; Fabrizio Spera, drums, percussion
Recorded live at Casa del Jazz in Rome, Italy on Nov. 22, 2018.
The Leimgruber/Willers duo has worked closely for four years and thrives on reciprocal actions and influences between the two musicians. There is a looseness derived through a conceptual method of abstraction, from which creative process the structures and paraphrases of their music are achieved. This in turn avoids the clichés and superfluity of a music lacking in free dialogue.
The duo’s invited guests are percussionist Fabrizio Spera and pianist Alvin Curran. Spera has been an established member of Improv and Free Jazz communities for many years, while Curran has enjoyed a thoroughly progressive career in educating and composing in similar arenas.
The music is compiled in a shell of avant-garde jazz and free improvisation and is a mélange of traditional rhythms and sequences, with new ideas and inventions culling experimentations from free-ranging, technical skills. Here again we discover a circumstance in which the musicians explore the relationships between composition and improvisation, and they do so with a vengeance, the saxophones passionate and vital, hugely expressive. Audacious, hot piano chords invite inspired, sometimes chaotic responses from Spera, who seems to draw on the entire gamut of experimental and inspirational sounds available from his instruments.
The music shifts between moods, at once it seems switching between weighty and tranquil, grave and dark, expressive, measured and meditative. Yet still we find there is room for hysteria and passion, vibrancy and wit, which all-in-all adds up to a fine album of eclectic music with a unique and exhilarating sound.
Reviewed by Ken Cheetham
