Anja Lechner / François Couturier LONTANO

LONTANO

 

Tarkovsky Quartet FRANÇOIS COUTURIER Nuit blanche

NUIT BLANCHE

François Couturier / Anja Lechner / Jean-Louis Matinier / Jean-Marc Larché TARKOVSKY QUARTET

TARKOVSKY QUARTET

ANOUAR BRAHEM Le pas du chat noir

These pieces emerged from the keys of a piano. Still affected by the powerful emotion of the encounter, and the exhaustion which followed the recording of Thimar, I set the oud aside for a few months, something that had never happened to me before. It was as though the music came from there, from the space created by that pause. As though it was the very expression of that lack. I did not start out with the intention of writing for the piano. It just replaced the oud. In fact, I used the piano as an instrument of modal writing. I have always had a piano in my studio.

Manfred Eicher, to whom I had played a few initial themes in Carthage, gave me great encouragement to develop them with a view to a recording. I composed some other pieces. Still for solo piano. The piano was the main character, the sole protagonist. It was only  later on that the oud came in. It joined the piano gradually, discreetly at first, then it assumed its place. It was a long time, on the other hand, before the idea of integrating the accordion came into my head, whereas it seems obvious to me now. It’s like this music’s inner song.

In particular I would like to thank François Couturier, my long-standing friend and accomplice, and Jean-Louis Matinier, both of whom worked tirelessly to communicate the universe of this music, in an interpretation extremely alert to nuances and tempos, and to the balance between inner tensions and falls. A tempo passed on to me by the movement of a tree I could see from my window, swaying gently in the breeze. (Anouar Brahem)

François Couturier / Anja Lechner / Jean-Marc Larché / Jean Louis Matinier TARKOVSKY QUARTET

In 2005, French pianist François Couturier organized a quartet with cellist Anja Lechner, accordionist Jean-Louis Matinier, and soprano saxophonist Jean-Marc Larché to record Nostalghia: Song for Tarkovsky, released by ECM in 2006, an album that paid tribute to Soviet film director Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-1986), not by playing music used in his films, but instead by creating new compositions, played in a jazz/classical hybrid, that evoked the moods of the filmmaker's works. The group toured as the Tarkovsky Quartet, and the 2011 album Tarkovsky Quartet is a follow-up recording in the same manner; since Couturier's 2009 solo piano CD Un Jour Si Blanc also paid tribute to Tarkovsky, it can be seen as the completion of a trilogy. As with Nostalghia, the quartet also overtly references various classical composers in the music, with the opening track, "A Celui Qui a Vu l'Ange," based on Pergolesi's "Stabat Mater," "Doktor Faustus" on Shostakovitch's "Sonata for Violoncello and Piano, Op. 40," and "Maroussia" and "La Passion Selon Andrei" drawing on Johann Sebastian Bach. The nearly ambient "San Galagno," with its glacially slow presentation of notes; the oddly atonal "Sardor," a collection of squeaks and squawks; and "Le Main et l'Oiseau" ("The Hand and the Bird") are all group improvisations by the four musicians. The actual relation to Tarkovsky is more inferential than specific, as an examination of the titles indicates. Whereas the tracks on Nostalghia often referred to actual Tarkovsky films, those here are more tangential. "Myshkin," for instance, is the name of a character in the fiction of Dostoyevsky about whom Tarkovsky intended to make a movie, but never did; he also wanted to direct a film based on Thomas Mann's novel Doktor Faustus, but did not. Leaving aside such associations, the quartet's music can be seen as contemplative, improvisational third-stream jazz very much in the ECM style, even if the cinematic and literary allusions are part of the overall appreciation of it. (William Ruhlmann)

François Couturier / Anja Lechner / Jean-Marc Larché / Jean-Louis Matinier NOSTALGHIA - SONG FOR TARKOVSKY

French pianist François Couturier was inspired by Soviet film director Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-1986) in creating the music on this album, but it should be noted at the outset that the album does not contain any music actually used in Tarkovsky's films in general or his 1983 movie Nostalghia in particular. Rather, Couturier, who states his admiration for Tarkovsky in his brief liner notes, saying that has "seen all his films over and over again," tried to evoke the mood of those films in writing these pieces of music, several of which share titles with them. Typically, Couturier also borrowed from several classical works, acknowledging that "Le Sacrifice" and "L'Éternal Retour" were "inspired by" Bach's Matthäuspassion; that "Nostalghia" and "Andrei" contain "references to" Alfred Schnittke's Sonata No. 1 for Violoncello and Piano; and that "Toliu" has "allusions to" Pergolesi's Stabat Mater. He took this music to three longtime musical compatriots, cellist Anja Lechner, soprano saxophonist Jean-Marc Larché, and accordionist Jean-Louis Matinier. The resulting quartet creates a free jazz/contemporary classical hybrid that will sound familiar to fans of the record label issuing the disc. "Song for Tarkovsky is a project that fits very naturally in ECM's soundworld," states a sentence in the album's press release, and that's certainly true. There are times, notably in the piano work in "Miroir," when one might be listening to an ECM Keith Jarrett album, with its haunting, echoed playing. The music arguably does evoke the style of Tarkovsky's filmmaking, particularly its contemplative tone and extremely long takes. But listeners don't have to be familiar with those movies to respond to it. (William Ruhlmann)

François Couturier UN JOUR SI BLANC

An autonomous and captivating album in its own right, “Un jour si blanc” was conceived by François Couturier as a second volume in an ideational trilogy, and an extension of the earlier “Nostalghia: Song for Tarkovsky” (ECM 1979).. The poetic approach of that disc – evident in the playing itself and in the referential and allusive conception – finds an echo in this solo piano album. 

It’s the French pianist’s first solo album, and a richly creative contribution also to the unaccompanied piano genre established at ECM long ago with landmark recordings of Chick Corea, Paul Bley, and Keith Jarrett. “Un jour si blanc” was produced by Manfred Eicher at the Auditorio Radio Svizzera, Lugano – already a noted space for ECM recordings, including Stefano Bollani’s “Piano Solo” and Marilyn Crispell’s solo “Vignettes”.
The new album’s starting point was a poem by Andrei Tarkovsky’s father, Arseni Tarkovsky, which gives the disk its title. After this, the recording opens up associatively, making improvisational interconnections. “I wanted to pay tribute to some great artists I particularly like”, says Couturier.
These include Johann Sebastian Bach, Arthur Rimbaud, the painters of the Blaue Reiter group, Claude Debussy, Franz Schubert, Toru Takemitsu, Joan Miró and more. “Lune de miel”, meanwhile, quotes liberally from “I Fall In Love Too Easily”. But if standard jazz is a component of this disc it is filtered through the focus of a player steeped in the European tradition, a player who can readily access the history of classical music and contemporary composition, and a sense for structure is paramount, even when Couturier is in full improvisational flow. (ECM Records)

François Couturier / Tarkovsky Quartet NUIT BLANCHE

Following their sublime duo outing, Moderato Cantabile (ECM, 2014), cellist Anja Lechner and François Couturier reunite in the pianist's quartet responsible for two-thirds of a recorded trilogy for ECM Records, all devoted to Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, whose name would ultimately become synonymous with the group: Tarkovsky Quartet. 

Bookending Couturier's second album of the trilogy, 2010's solo piano session Un jour si blanc, 2006's Nostalghia—Songs for Tarkovsky and 2011's Tarkovsky Quartet established Couturier's quartet—also featuring soprano saxophonist Jean March Larche and accordionist Jean Louis Matinier—as a chamber-like group with increasingly deep chemistry, a particularly profound allegiance to the value of space and significance of decay, and an ability to improvise and/or interpret with equal parts discretion and taste, whether it's vividly lyrical or more jaggedly angular, thoroughly scripted or completely open-ended. 

With Nuit Blanche, Couturier's trilogy becomes a quadrilogy, as his quartet expands its horizons even farther than ever before on an album that explores ambiguous nether-regions of time, space and consciousness. Being from a group that may not record or perform together as often as they (or their fans) might like, there are other projects that keep the internal chemistry growing...and in contexts that, as different as they are, provide grist for alternative explorations when everyone comes together as Tarkovsky Quartet.

Anja Lechner / François Couturier KOMITAS - GURDJIEFF - MOMPOU Moderato Cantabile

After a decade of shared work in the Tarkovsky Quartet and an ongoing alliance in the Pergolesi Project (with singer Maria Pia De Vito), German cellist Anja Lechner and French pianist François Couturier unveil their new duo. The players approach the music from different vantage points: Lechner is a classical soloist with an uncommon interest in improvisation, Couturier a jazz musician travelling ever further from jazz. On Moderato cantabile they present their own arrangements of works by three fascinating outsiders from the margins of music history – G.I. Gurdjieff, Komitas, and Federico Mompou. To differing degree their music reveals influences from the east, both in terms of relationship to folk traditions and religious music, and philosophically. A contemplative air pervades the session. The programme has connections to Anja Lechner’s acclaimed account of Gurdjieff’s music on the earlier Chants, Hymns and Dances (with Vassilis Tsabropoulos), but the new duo has its own identity, and time spent in Armenia has deepened Lechner’s understanding of the contexts from which the music emerged: her cello assumes almost a singer’s role in these pieces, exploring the strong melodies. François Couturier’s compositions function as both contrasting and complementary elements. As a player, François has a long history of working with Mompou’s music. He has been influenced, furthermore, by his association with Anouar Brahem, and the sonorities of the Middle East are part of his palette. Moderato cantabile, a striking and unusual album, was recorded in the rich acoustics of the Lugano studio in November 2013 and produced by Manfred Eicher.
Franҫois Couturier is featured here both as player and composer and his pieces function as both contrasting and complementary elements. As the liner notes point out, “Years spent in the company of Tunisian oud master Anouar Brahem seem to have reinforced a contemplative element in Couturier’s own idiom as player, composer, arranger. A reflective patience is characteristic of much of his work. In his music, with or without a score, themes tend to be slowly unfolded and developed. His compositions are ‘evolutionary’, open to change in the moment, and his improvisations maintain a lyrical awareness and sense of form. Unlike many improvising contemporaries he is unafraid to broach the brink of silence – making him perhaps a natural interpreter for Mompou’s Música Callada.” Couturier has previously played arrangements of Mompou in jazz piano trio contexts, and the Catalan composer has been an important reference for him, just as the Transcaucasian Gurdjieff and the Armenian Komitas Vardapet have been important references for Lechner. The cellist first came to understand Komitas’s role in bridging Armenian secular and sacred music though her work with Tigran Mansurian. Her interpretations of Gurdjieff, meanwhile, had a powerful impact in Armenia, and inspired the foundation of the Gurdjieff Folk Instruments Ensemble. Once again on Moderato cantabile Lechner and Couturier, with their new arrangements of Komitas, Gurdjieff and Mompou, show us that this music responds to a freely interpretative approach. Moderato cantabile was recorded in the rich acoustics of Lugano’s Auditorio Radiotelevisione svizzera in November 2013, and produced by Manfred Eicher. Anja Lechner, born in Kassel, Germany, studied with Heinrich Schiff and Janos Starker. She has performed as soloist with orchestras including the Amsterdam Sinfonietta, the Armenian Philharmonic Orchestra, the Slowakische Philharmonie, and the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, and plays chamber music with partners including pianists Alexei Lubimov, Silke Avenhaus and Kirill Gerstein, cellist Agnès Vesterman, violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, and clarinetist Reto Bieri. Lechner has premiered compositions by Tigran Mansurian, Valentin Silvestrov, Tõnu Kõrvits and Annette Focks amongst others. For 18 years she was the cellist of the Rosamunde Quartet, whose acclaimed ECM New Series albums embraced a scope of music from Joseph Haydn to Thomas Larcher. Her most recent recordings include Mansurian’s Quasi Parlando and Double Concerto with the Amsterdam Sinfonietta. In preparation is an album of solos and duos with Agnès Vesterman, playing compositions of Silvestrov. At home in all aspects of classical music, she is also fluent in diverse improvisational traditions, and has a long-running collaboration with bandoneonist Dino Saluzzi – documented in the film El Encuentro and on albums including Ojos Negros and Navidad de Los Andes. François Couturier began playing piano at the age of six. After completing studies in classical music and musicology in the early 1970s, he began improvising in earnest, initially taking his cue from Paul Bley, Chick Corea and Joachim Kühn. In 1980 he won France’s Prix Django Reinhardt which raised his international profile, and shortly thereafter joined John McLaughlin’s group, touring and recording with the English guitarist. Couturier’s first appearance on ECM was on Anouar Brahem’s Khomsa in 1994. From 2001, he toured widely with the oud player in trio with accordionist Jean-Louis Matinier, and is featured on the albums Le pas du chat noir and Voyage de Sahar. He also appears on Brahem’s forthcoming album Souvenance: Music for oud, quartet and string orchestra. His recordings with Anja Lechner include Nostalghia – Song for Tarkovsky and Tarkovsky Quartet which incorporate his compositions as well as group improvising. Il Pergolese features his arrangements of music of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi. Other Couturier recordings on ECM are Poros, duets with violinist Dominique Pifarély, and the solo piano album Un jour si blanc.

Maria Pia de Vito / François Couturier / Anja Lechner / Michele Rabbia IL PERGOLESE

A project paying tribute to 18th century composer Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710 – 1736), Il Pergolese presents new arrangements and improvisation inspired by opera and sacred music. Singer Maria Pia De Vito, pianist François Couturier, cellist Anja Lechner and percussionist Michele Rabbia also consider Pergolesi’s relationship to the art music and the popular music of Naples from a contemporary perspective,. The text of the Stabat Mater – translated into Neapolitan by Maria Pia De Vito – and the opera arias, are transformed into songs and vivid narrative, open frames providing the key to reinterpreting Pergolesi. François Couturier's arrangements widen Pergolesi's structures, offering space for much improvisational interaction. For Il Pergolese is a real group project with creative from all participants, a discourse among sounds with rhythms generated by drums and metals and sampled and real-time electronics. “Sound textures grow dense with the richness of instrumental counterpoint or are set free in electronic soundscapes and along coloristic, percussive lines, as cello becomes voice or voice becomes an instrument” says Maria Pia De Vito in a performer’s note in the CD booklet.

The project was commissioned by the Festival Pergolesi-Spontini of Jesi in 2011. Reviewing the premiere performance, Augusta Franco Cardinali of Voce della Vallesina wrote of “unforeseen impressions for the listener. Crystallized sound fragments expand into flares of notes like meteors. Pergolesi’s music emerges, becomes increasingly recognizable until it is transformed into prayer... This music, in which different styles are blended together, cannot be categorized. It would be inexact to call it ‘experimental music’, since its sound material, both vocal and instrumental, is treated with uncommon sensitivity, competence, intelligence, and stylistic elegance as well as technical expertise...” The improvisational component ensures that each performance of Il Pergolese is unique. The present interpretation was recorded in Lugano in December 2012, with Manfred Eicher as producer.

Three of the protagonists of Il Pergolese – François Couturier, Anja Lechner and Michele Rabbia are well-known to ECM listeners. German cellist Lechner has appeared on more than twenty ECM recordings playing everything from tango with Dino Saluzzi to compositions of Mansurian and Silvestrov with the Rosamunde Quartet or arrangements of Gurdjieff with Vassilis Tsabropoulos. At home with both improvisation and the classical tradition, Lechner is, with Dino Saluzzi, the subject of the documentary film “El Encuentro” made by Norbert Wiedmer & Enrique Ros and recently issued by ECM on DVD.

French pianist François Couturier is the founder-composer of the Tarkovsky Quartet, of which Anja Lechner is a member, and also plays in duo with the cellist. Couturier’s other ECM albums include a solo recording Un jour si blanc, and a duo disc with violinist Dominique Pifarély, as well as recordings with Tunisian oud master Anouar Brahem.

Italian percussionist Michele Rabbia has been the principal drummer of Stefano Battaglia’s projects since 2000 and appears on several ECM discs with the pianist including Raccolto, Re: Pasolini and Pastorale a disc of duets incorporating his live electronic treatments. Rabbia has collaborated with numerous musicians, the long list including Enrico Rava, Charlie Mariano, Antonello Sallis, Dominique Pifarély, Rita Marcotuli, the Italian Instabile Orchestra, Sainkho Namchylak, Paul McCandless and many others.

Singer Maria Pia De Vito makes her ECM debut with Il Pergolese. She has long been active in improvisation and jazz with musical partners including John Taylor, Ralph Towner, Rita Marcatouli, Norma Winstone, Steve Swallow, Paolo Fresu, Gianluigi Trovesi, Giorgio Gaslini, Colin Towns and many more. Musical research, exploring beneath the work’s surfaces, has been a key element of her performances from the outset, whether the music at hand has been jazz of the American songbook, idiosyncratic Neapolitan vocal music (De Vito is herself a native of Naples), adaptations of Monteverdi with Bruno Tommaso or – as on the present disc – Pergolesi as an improvisational resource.