Natural ingredients
“Haven’t you heard of the music of the spheres?” asked the dragon. “It’s the music that space makes to itself. All the spirits inside all the stars are singing. I’m a star spirit. I sing too. The music of the spheres is what makes space so peaceful.”
– Ted Hughes
Samares sends me to another dimension entirely. An elsewhere.
Thoughts drift even settling in to listen somehow to the sense of wonder you find in the work of the great English poet Ted Hughes.
The words above Hughes wrote in the 1960s in his sci-fi book for children, The Iron Man.
That notion of the music of the spheres and space take me into this album at last after such a random juxtaposition.
Maybe it is not so much of a digression after all without even the need to indulge in a figurative triple salchow of the imagination to get there.
Impressionistic sketches
Nine pieces. All are by the Lausanne born Swiss pianist Colin Vallon, 44. They are like impressionistic sketches that uncoil themselves and the pleasure is partly in experiencing a certain sensual unravelling.
Once again this most aesthetic of impressionist jazz players is with double bass and drum team Patrice Moret and Julian Sartorius, both familiar from Le Vent and Danse.
Moret goes even further back with Vallon to 2006’s Ailleurs when the drummer in those days was Samuel Rohrer.
A gracefulness
Opener ‘Racine’ on this latest recorded in Lugano is extremely introspective. This isn’t groove music nor designed to accompany jelly and ice cream. Party hats are not worn. From ‘Mars’ on this album is more involving than what I remember of their earlier work.
With natural motifs in the naming, as well as tunes composed for the pianist-composer’s children – Samares in the title is a fruit.
The album livens up a bit on ‘Ronce’ (a blackberry) when Sartorius’ scampering opening comes as something of a surprise but welcome it is too.
‘Soft fire with a cloud’s grace’
There’s change in the air here – there seems to be more light and optimism, again cleave to words from Hughes – that notion he conjured of a sense of “soft fire with a cloud’s grace.”
The trio play frequently in a Swiss town called Thun in the canton of Bern.
Prepared piano work is a feature – this isn’t an avant-garde statement more incrementally progressive in its deft modulations and harmonic grace the direction. Tones and cadences direct you towards an ineffable escape in this most definitive of all Colin & co accounts. The poignant ‘Souche’ is our pick of the album while ‘Brin’ is probably the most persuasive in terms of flow.
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