Clément Janinet | Arve Henriksen | Ambre Vuillermoz | Robert Lucaciu - Garden of Silences (BMC Records)
Album review
At the time when I had just started listening to contemporary jazz after going through the classics, Dave Douglas was one of my favorite musicians. I listened to many of his albums, including Charms of the Night Sky, which stood out for its specific chamber-like atmosphere – no drums, with the fantastic Guy Klucevsek on accordion, violinist Mark Feldman, and Greg Cohen on double bass. It wasn’t “just another Douglas album,” but also a personal discovery of a new musical world of chamber expression that doesn’t obey conventions or genres.
The first few times I listened to Garden of Silences, I immediately thought of that album. Not because I think Janinet plays like Feldman or Henriksen like Douglas – which is certainly not the case – but because it triggered a similar emotional response in me. Only today, just before writing the review, did I read the promotional text saying that the “dialogue among the four musicians was inspired by the instrumentation of Dave Douglas’s album “Charms Of The Night Sky.”
Another “emotional reference” for this album was the Tarkovsky Quartet, one of ECM’s outstanding chamber ensembles – François Couturier on piano, Anja Lechner on cello, Jean-Louis Matinier on accordion, and Jean-Marc Larché on soprano saxophone. Although the instrumentation is somewhat different, there is that chamber setting and the accordion as an important instrument, but above all that “feeling” the music evokes.
Of course, all of this is based on personal associations; and perhaps a recommendation for listeners who enjoy the above-mentioned bands. But it is important to say that violinist Clément Janinet is not a derivative musician, and his Garden of Silences has the strong potential to become a reference point for some other bands in the future. The same applies to Janinet’s very interesting body of work, where my attention was first drawn to his chamber ensemble La litanie des cimes, and later to Ornette Under the Repetitive Skies in a somewhat freer stylistic context.
On the current album, references are also made to “the legacy of Monteverdi, Buxtehude, and Dowland” – however, since I approach this album primarily from the perspective of a jazz and improvised music listener, I mention this more in an informational context. What I personally find most appealing in Janinet’s work is its highly distinctive and exciting, above all fluid character, and the way it blends jazz with chamber composition.
While Douglas is still grounded in jazz structures of themes and solos, and Tarkovsky in composition and arrangement, Clément Janinet excels in blending all these ingredients. Yes, there are „jazz moments“, composed sections, beautiful melodies, and delicate improvisations, but at no point can I clearly separate them while listening. From the very first bars of the compositions, there is a sense of “flowing over” and an imperceptible interweaving of these ideas and elements.
Instruments enter and leave the soundscape; they swell and fade; improvisations sound like the most carefully written melodies, and the sense of tempo and rhythm is highly elusive. There is no “anchor” provided by a conventional rhythm section, nor any attempt to compensate for its absence through the “reassignment” of individual instruments.
In such a constellation, there are no star players. Or rather, they are all stars. Even Arve Henriksen, whose trumpet sound can easily be recognized in a blindfold test, doesn’t „steal the show“ even when he is in the foreground and soloing. This is certainly supported by the shared sensibility of Janinet and Henriksen, but also by the bandleader’s ability to play with and maneuver the quartet’s dynamics.
Robert Lucaciu appears on my playlist for the third time this year – in a duo formation with Evi Filippou, and in Daniel Erdmann’s Thérapie de Couple, and now with Janinet – witnessing in real time the rise of a major new name in European jazz. I had not listened to Ambre Vuillermoz before, but her contribution is no less than impressive.
Clément Janinet is entering his most creative years, and it feels like each new album will be a masterpiece. I am looking forward to everything he will release in the future.