French-Canadian, Montreal resident alto saxophonist François Carrier's first album release was Poursuite (Amplitude, 1994) featuring his trio of the time plus a guest on sitar. In the three decades since, Carrier has accumulated an impressive discography, with Openness being his thirty-seventh release and also his first ever triple album. From the late '90s onwards, Carrier has recorded with an impressive array of musicians, including such names as Dewey Redman, Uri Caine, Paul Bley, Steve Beresford, John Edwards, Alexander Hawkins and Alexander von Schlippenbach. Once drummer Michel Lambert had joined Carrier's trio, he and Carrier played together as a duo, in the trio and also in larger groups. Beginning with a visit to Nepal in 2006, the pair travelled abroad to various countries, playing gigs with local musicians and recording them for release on CD.
In late 2005, Carrier was putting together his annual series of concerts, with local and international musicians. Entitled "Cinq soirées happening", they were scheduled for May 2nd to 6th 2006 at Théâtre La Chapelle, a fine venue in the heart of Montreal. Having just heard of Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stanko via the Pole's album Matka Joanna (ECM, 1994) Carrier knew he had to do something with Stanko. Soon it was arranged that the trumpeter would play two May concerts in Montreal. In addition to Stanko, Carrier and Lambert, violist Mat Manieri and bassist Gary Peacock agreed to join, each having played with Carrier before. And so, Francois Carrier Ensemble was born.
Openness comprises thirteen tracks, totalling two hours and fifty-two minutes, which is all of the quintet's two concerts on May 5th and 6th 2006. This is the first time all these tracks have been released together. In keeping with the rest of the festival, all of the music that the quintet played was improvised, with all five musicians playing together at both concerts. Given that they had never played together before, the music they spontaneously produced is jaw-droppingly coherent and compellingly listenable. As Carrier reports in his liner notes, "After the first concert, Tomasz told me he really didn't know how we could have pulled off such fantastic music with the instrumentation I had put together but it all made sense to me." In fact, the way the five improvised together is a lesson to all improvisers; they listened to each other throughout, only playing when they could make an appropriate contribution and trusting each other to do the same. Five stars.
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