The partnership of Swiss pianist Sylvie Courvoisier and American violinist Mark Feldman has spanned most variations of sharp-end jazz over the years, but the quartet on this all-improv session is one of their loosest, featuring British sax innovator Evan Parker and Japanese electronics artist and percussionist Ikue Mori. There are four group pieces, and five for various duets. The opening Death of a Salesman’s creaking-door sounds mixed with straight-violin delicacies and agitated free-percussion takes no prisoners, but the flighty dances of Parker’s soprano sax with Feldman’s spinning falsetto lines and the thriller-movie poundings of the finale are lyrical and dramatic. Quiet piano-string pluckings shadow rapturous slow-bowed tones; piano improv hurtles over whooshing, rustling percussion; dreamy violin arias are swept into free-sax meditations. Feldman’s duet with Mori’s twinkly electronic tones, Parker’s jazzy tenor-sax dialogue with Courvoisier and the latter’s delicate finale with Mori are duet highlights of a set that shows just how sonically mesmerising and musical free-improv can be.
