A guitarist, a pianist and a sound engineer come together to record leaves and snows, creating a certain seasonal quality. Antoine Berthiaume from Canada, the French musician Quentin SirJacq and Norman Teale hailing from the US have together built on minimal instrumental improvisation. The music sometimes reminds one of a film score, especially when piano is added. Tiny elements, like plucking, occasional percussion and concrete sounds. The music is rather slow; a dreamy atmosphere occurs. Fourteen tracks that bring a pleasant listening experience.

Of the three players on Leaves and Snows, only guitarist Antoine Berthiaume is known to me, from Soshin, a series of duets on Ambiances Magnetiques with fellow stringbenders Fred Frith and Derek Bailey.

Berthiaume is nearer to Frith than Bailey in his guitar stylings, and on Leaves and Snows he’s occasionally drawn to the tuneful end of the improvisation spectrum. Freedom Fried and Kawaidski for example, contain elegant, simple melodies and sound thoroughly composed, though they may not be, while Staring at a Western Time is suggestive of Hans Reichel mimicking one of Ry Cooder’s ‘lone guitar in the wilderness’ film soundtracks.

But enough of comparisons, they distract attention from a key point — the individualism of Berthiaume’s approach, something he has in common with Quentin Sirjacq (piano, sometimes prepared) and especially Norman Teale (electronics). These players already have a distinctive music that, for all its spontaneity, is conceptually rigorous and displays a true group sensibility. They aren’t garrulous or barnstorming players — the music they make is spare and exacting, cool but not chilly, and Teale’s delicate electronic soundscaping and sensitive interactions are remarkable for such a young and relatively inexperienced player.

Each of them brings something worthwhile to the mix, and Teale’s engineering and editing of the session is exemplary- this is one of the best-sounding CDs I’ve heard for quite some time. In her brief sleevenote to Leaves and Snows, Jöelle Léandre describes the music as “profound” and “lovely”, which sums it up rather well. Consistently attractive without ever lapsing into prettiness, Leaves and Snows is a great success.

If you asked me to recap one of my fall semesters at college in musical form, I’d play a couple of Neil Young songs and let that be that. If you posed the same request to these three gentlemen, they’d pick up their respective instruments and respond with minimal, ominous improvisation, painting sleepless weekends with detuned clattering and rendering the calmer days between with patient plucking and gossamer textures. I can say this with confidence because it’s exactly what Leaves and Snow is. Recorded during the Fall 2004 semester while these three men were taking classes at Mills College, this avant-garde journal takes us from leaf-fall to snowfall and watches the days grow shorter and shorter.

Guitarist Berthiaume and pianist Sirjacq both consider themselves to be jazz musicians — though hardly the conventional sort, if Berthiaume’s collaborations with Fred Frith and Derek Bailey are any indication. Teale, meanwhile, works primarily as an engineer, reinterpreting others’ ideas by injecting his own. It’s unclear whether the songs on Leaves and Snow were recorded as single takes or as a series of takes on individual motifs, but its players are such skilled improvisers that either explanation seems viable, just as a very thin line separates Comets on Fire or Bardo Pond’s practice jams from their “written” studio output.

Despite its consistency in color, Leaves and Snow feels less like a traditional album than a compilation. Music- making approaches differ greatly from track to track. Un petit morceau de visage opens the album with classy Keith Jarrett-style solo piano, after which Teale’s swarthy loops bite and tear through SirJacq’s pregnant pauses. Freedom fried shows the two working in unison, cinematic synth sweeps lifting Sirjacq’s reserved notes. Berthiaume covers a daunting patch of land by himself, alternating between smoky desperado slide (Staring at a western time), zither-like drones (Contemplating innuendo) and all varieties of stomach-churning (in a good way) skronk. On Kawaidski, the three musicians shift focus from melody to percussion, beating on a number of tinny instruments to create a naked, pure landscape.

Given its fiercely divergent nature, Leaves and Snow doesn’t always go down smoothly. In the right frame of mind, however, its individual songs prove captivating as distinct units. The musicians’ deft economy of space — always fill it up in relation to one another, but still leave plenty of it, even in the climaxes — recalls the finest minimalists, while their bursts of swarming, high volume skree makes wading through the album’s dark recesses anything but unrewarding.

Giovane (classe 1977) e talentuoso chitarrista di Montréal, Antoine Berthiaume ha in passato incrociato la sua sei corde con quelle di due vecchie volpi dell’improvvisazione radicale come Derek Bailey e Fred Frith (cfr Shoshin del 2002, sempre su Ambiances Magnétiques). Adesso è la volta di un album in trio col pianista francese Quentin Sirjacq e l’ingegnere del suono americano Norman Teale, qui agli strumenti elettronici. Grevi implosioni improvvisative, sempre in bilico tra calore cromatico e astrazione, coi fulminei ronzi entomologici di Comme un lézard sous le grand fouet du jour caniculaire sospesi tra l’immaginario/immaginifico fanta-blues Contemplating Innuendo e le desolate ambientazioni morriconiane di Staring at a Western Time. (7/8)

This trio features Antoine Berthiaume on guitar & percussion, Quentin SirJacq on piano & percussion and Norman Teale on electronics, mixing & engineering. This was recorded at Mills College where Fred Frith has taught for the past few years. Experimental guitarist, Antoine Berthiaume, has a fine guitar duos disc out a couple of years back with two older pioneers, Derek Bailey and Fred Frith (on AM). I had never heard of him before this, but I was most intrigued. He recently moved to New York and played a marvelous solo set here last month. This is his second collaborative effort on the AM label and I can’t say I’ve heard of the other tow players, but again I am quite surprised. Antoine has been influenced by Frith, Bailey and other more adventurous guitarists and has come up with his own sound, his own crafty bag of tricks or ideas. Leaves and Snows is a mysterious combination of sounds, often quiet, yet very selective and evocative. Quentin sounds as if he is playing inside the piano and creating subtle alien landscapes, as Antoine plays delicate, yet eerie slide and e-bow induced ghost-like sounds. I don’t quite know what Norman Teale is doing at times, yet we hear some distant electronics and subtle manipulations at times. Occasional percussion is also utilized, adding a bit of subtle spice to keeps thing a bit off balance. My favorite moments are when Antoine is his most Frith-like, playing magically melodic chords or sounds and adding just the right amount of suspense. Too marvelous for words, no, just marvelous enough.

A surprising cd from a new trio. The name of Antoine Berthiaume may ring a bell, as I reviewed his debut on Ambiances Magnétiques for Vital Weekly some time ago. On this album guitarist Berthiaume played guitar duets with Fred Frith and Derek Bailey. Not bads for a debute! On his new album we do not find him sided by veterans but accompanied by two other young musicians. This should guarantee a fresh approach and it does. Quentin Sirjacq is a pianist and composer from Paris. He studied in Holland and more recently at Mills College. It’s here that he and Berthiaume met during an improvisation class led by Joëlle Léandre. In the collaboration that grew Norman Teale (mixing, engineering, electronics) later joined in. And so this unusual trio of guitar, piano and electronics was a fact.

Their music is of a typical kind of modern music. Their music keeps lots of memories of a wide diversity of influences: jazz, rock, free improvisation, noise, ambient, touches of eastern music, etc. But the result is nothing of it all, but a very open improvisation based music. Atmosphere and mood are important in their soundscaping exercises. Sometimes their music is almost sounding like filmmusic echoing Morricone (Staring at a western time) or Ry Cooder. This means that they do not intend to discomfort the listener. Although their music is of course of a experimental kind, it is on the easy listening section of the spectrum.

A track like Freedom fried surprised me, as it was new for me to hear improvised music sounding so ‘romantic’ as it does here. A track like 40 Pills shows their good taste for coloring. It sounds like some gamelan music played on toy instruments.

In most pieces the guitar of Berthiaume is in a prominent role. Tracks like Leaves and snows and Nuclear Times are built around the piano playing of Sirjacq. The electronic treatments by Teale a harder to identify on the one hand, but that they are omnipresent is not to be missed. Quietly and slowly the three unfold their ideas in their poetic approach of improvised music. A nice one.