Product Description

Joëlle Leandre: Solo 160 page book. The unique voice of double-bassist Joëlle Léandre moves back and forth between the worlds of theatre, poetry, dance, improvisation and composition. With passion and fire, she recounts her main sources of inspiration, encounters with John Cage, Peter Kowald, Giacinto Scelsi, Steve Lacy, Philippe Fénélon, Betsy Jolas, Derek Bailey, George Lewis, Anthony Braxton among others…

Review

Improvisation is a way of life, and no one better than Léandre renders the concept into words, exercising the mechanisms of reminiscence correspondingly to her stage behaviour. An ongoing piece of theatre with lots of sounds no distinction between beauty and ugliness, anything goes to produce an interesting soliloquy and whatever constitutes the ever-present traits of a creative personality at large. Sturdy family roots, a rigid academic training, the constant sense of rebellion, the research and the curiosity for what s divergent, a modicum of ironic obsession. It s all in these pages constellated with fragments of anecdotes, reflections on the disguised importance of quotidian events, emotional recalls of collaborations with composers such as Scelsi and Cage, annoyed underlining of the secondary role of women in the gradually codified world of free playing ( Where are my sisters? is a recurring question). Léandre is a clever feminist, who acts practically instead of writing sterile manifestos. If there were more female specimens like this we would probably see less inflated lips and breasts, and hear sharper assertions and amazing and always amusing music. The book is complemented by a DVD containing the footage of a Canadian performance from 2009 and a CD comprising 38 minutes from a 2005 concert in Piednu. Both items might be cause for celebration even if issued separately, given the comprehensive sight that they furnish us with on this woman s entertaining attitude. Léandre is the performer that makes me laugh as nobody else, this standing among the main reasons for the shameless love of her persona besides astounding similarities in some aspects of our personal values. However, it is the text which a good reader can easily finish in an afternoon (no pretentious intellectualism here) that really justifies this rave review.. --Massimo Ricci. Touching Extremes.

Good news for those non-French-speaking music lovers who can now get access to the translation of A Voix Basse, the biography of Joëlle Léandre, written by Franck Médioni, and translated by Jeffrey Grice. I will not review the book again. It is worth reading. There aren't that many books about modern music, let alone books that are so honest and frank. About the music. It is Real. Art. Visionary. Uncompromising. Intense. Tender and poetic. Raw and angry. Captivating from beginning to end. Don't miss it. --freejazz-stef.