LDL

A successor or an enhancement of the trio formulations featuring soprano saxophonist Urs Leimgruber, pianist Jacques Demierre and bassist Barre Phillips, LDL includes the first two plus synthesizer Thomas Lehn, who sometimes guested with the earlier three. While the original configuration dissolved when Phillips returned to the US in 2022, after 50 years in France, the trio with German Lehn and two Swiss musicians creates equally compelling sounds.

Mostly the purrs, hisses and drones from the synthesizer serve as backdrop or slight timbral indications during the more than hour long improvisation. Infrequently Lehn’s involved in an antiphonic exchange with one or the other. Mostly though the exposition relies on the familiarity the pianist and saxophonist have with each other’s playing. Leimgruber often favors an earsplitting whistle for effect, with his most common output midrange, but still segmented by shrill peeps, whiny split tones and rapid doits. Striking displays of circular breathing are heard around the half way mark and in the penultimate sequence. But it’s a tribute to the saxophonist’s taste that these brief interludes aren’t emphasized but instead become part of the evolving sonic gestalt.

Among Lehn’s bubbling variations and voltage continuum plus Leimgruber’s aviary shrills and rapid reed bites, Demierre’s forays into stopped key actions, intense keyboard smashes and harsh key clipping are wrapped up as rejoinders to the others’ caustic timbres. Frequently during the piece’s evolution he will interject lyrical, passionate and almost romantic motifs, as when he adds a melodic twist to the improvisation’s penultimate evolution. At junctures this timbral lightness serves as a half-humorous response to the synthesizer’s resounding hisses or the saxophonist’s duck-like honks. In triple interlocution piano glissandi or march tempos keep the narrative reflective and reasonable as well as genuine and original.

Just as new iterations of Miles Davis’s quintets didn’t dimmish the work of earlier ones, but forged their own paths, LDL isn’t a successor to the earlier trio but an aggregation with another challenging take on Free Music.

–Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. in 2. the 3. endless 4. wind

Personnel: Urs Leimgruber (soprano saxophone); Jacques Demierre (piano) and Thomas Lehn (analogue synthesizer and sound processing)