Quinsin Nachoff's disc on Songlines is a strangely striped cat. It has classical
music claws with its string quartet of improvising musicians, but with the
groovy padded feet of the drums and bass duo of Mark Helias and Jim Black, a
pair of killer rhythmists. The combination of jazz trio (Nachoff, saxophone,
Helias, bass and Black, drums) with string quartet (Nathalie Bonin and Noémi
Racine Gaudreault, violin; Jean René, viola; and Julie Trudeau, cello) makes for
a very appealing cocktail, that goes down like a daiquiri, very subtle and
elegant, but intoxicating nonetheless. Nachoff's soprano musings are earnest
and whimsical, but I prefer the tenor, which he can play with a wider-ranging
expressivity. The strings sound great; no surprise, since these are some of the
best of the crossover musicians in Québec. The voicings for the violins, viola
and cello are creative and fresh, with mannerisms from "classical" quartet
writing seamlessly integrated into a more jazz-oriented context (i.e.
rhythmically plastic and blues-informed). Some tunes, sound like re-workings of
standard jazz repertoire-e.g. "October" sounds like "'Round Midnight." "How
Postmodern of Me" is, to these ears, the strongest cut, with its frenetic yet
spot-on cross-cutting between grooves, styles, meters, tempi and textures. Most
of the disc is, on first hearing, rather startling, with the confluence of dry
string textures, the keening saxophone and the urban beats and bass, but this is
music that starts from very polished and controlled composition but, happily,
does not end there and develops via some risk-taking, yet beautiful playing.
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