LOUIS SCLAVIS “India”

ARTIST

Louis Sclavis

ALBUM TITLE

“India”

LABEL

Yolk

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Thirty-eight years after Chine, recorded with the historic quartet that included Dominique Pifarély, Louis Sclavis returns with an album that can rightly be considered a conceptual twin to that 1987 work. The connection is evident in the title, the geographical reference, and even the cover design. While Chine has long since been absorbed into history and belongs to Sclavis’s creative golden age, India seems poised to occupy an equally central position in the clarinetist’s output thanks to its seamless intersection of structure and aleatory elements. These elements are now more controlled than before and closely aligned with the compositional program that underpinned the earlier album.

A particularly significant development is the trumpet’s entry into the counterpoint role that Sclavis has so often entrusted to the trombone. With its clear and ringing tone, the trumpet becomes the ideal complement to the leader, who abandoned the soprano saxophone years ago, as he told us in an interview. That instrument had been the sunniest and most immediate colour in Sclavis’s palette. Everything here proceeds in the best possible way, unfolding through absolute command of the musical material and its evolution. This control has never been absent in his work, yet it still leaves room for the unpredictability that elevates this excellent album by one of the most inspired and authoritative standard-bearers of European jazz.

This alone should be reason enough to consider India worthy of the utmost attention.

Alberto Bazzurro

DISTRIBUTED BY

www.yolkrecords.com

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