Dominique Pifarély Quartet – Tracé provisoire (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:03:33 minutes | 1,09 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM
Last year ECM issued Time Before And Time After, Dominique Pifarély’s richly creative solo recital. Now comes Tracé provisoire, a bracing quartet album, which provides a marvellous context for the wider range of the French violinist’s expression. Pifarély, as long-time followers are aware, is a musician who thrives in the unstable territory between improvisation and composition, and his pieces here establish ideas, structural elements and themes which encourage textural, lyrical and abstract improvising to develop in the moment. The interplay amongst the players is dynamic, exploratory and engaging, inspiring Dominique to fine and differentiated soloing. If the line-up of violin, piano, bass and drums appears more ‘jazz-like’ than some of Pifarély’s earlier ensembles, appearances can be deceptive. Jazz is certainly part of the story, but the band scarcely stays in one place long enough to be pigeonholed. The free movement of energy is central to the music, which incorporates group improvising, luminous counterpoint, intense inner pulsations and open, lyrical expanses.
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Dominique Pifarély Quartet – Nocturnes (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 48:27 minutes | 857 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Clean Feed
Any new recording by French violinist Dominique Pifarély is good news. Being his quartet with Antonin Rayon,Bruno Chevillon and François Merville his more enduring band, this former companion of the also French reedist Louis Sclavis benefits from the maturity of this project, gained through the years, but also from an attitude of always reinventing itself, going to places that we not explored before. Interesting would be to compare this “Nocturnes” with “Tracé Provisoire”, the album recorded by the Dominique Pifarély Quartet for ECM. If this previous one had the undistinguishable mark of Manfred Eicher’s production, the first evidence of difference when listening to “Nocturnes” is in Sound. More is to come, even if there’s similar poetic atmospheres and, as a composer (and particularly brilliant at that task), Pifarély continues to put his writing at the service of the collective and of their improvisational work, be it the ensemble or the individual solos. Besides the pleasure these four exceptional instrumentalists give to our ears, the way in which the composed and the improvised intermingles in this collection of pieces is a very strong factor of enthusiasm.
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