Sur Plumb: le dialogue récemment improvisé par la clarinettiste Lori Freedman et le tromboniste Scott Thomson.

Instables, les deux intervenants s’imposent des instincts de jeu différents: discours haché ou notes longues gagnées par l’angoisse ou l’ironie, méthode éprouvée mais appliquée encore de l’écoute attentive ou interventions individuelles annulant tout fantasme d’effort commun, pratiques le plus souvent expérimentales. Régulièrement investi, plus rarement convaincant, l’exercice du duo improvisé est ici porté haut par une paire alerte: Lori Freedman et Scott Thomson, Canadiens doués et d’aplomb.

A satisfying 45 minutes of free improv fire music from Canada’s Lori Freedman and Scott Thomson. Freedman is one of, to my knowledge, two major Canadian bass clarinetists alongside Halifax’s Jeff O’Reilly. She has shared the stage with major players on the avant and free improv scenes — and beyond — including a noteworthy duet with fellow ‘licorice stick’ abuser François Houle. Thomson I’m not familiar with but he proves himself up to the task of brushing up against Freedman’s impressive talents with a series of squeaks, shrieks, skronks and skree that fall firmly in the category of ‘extended technique’.

Plumb is a very dynamic session with lots of variety. At times meditative and peaceful, deeply out there, noisy, shrill, mellifluous, grating like fingernails on a chalkboard, humourous, beautiful and unapologetically dissonant — they explore all facets of their instruments and sonic possibility.

Though Freedman is a powerful force that can really burn, she also knows when to step back and give other players a chance to shine. She does that on the third piece, Lead, letting Thomson take a solo flight for the whole track. Very nice piece.

Fans of abstract free improv in that gray zone between jazz and contemporary classical will love Plumb. An excellent release from new label Barnyard. Let’s hope they continue to put out albums of this calibre and they’ll make a fine addition to the Canadian musical landscape alongside labels like Jesse Zubot’s Drip Audio.

Plumb is an honest, no-frills document of two of the busiest musicians in Canadian improvised music joining forces for a good-humoured recording session. From a personality perspective, Toronto, ON trombonist Scott Thomson often plays the rascally rogue, while Montréal clarinettist Lori Freedman is more earnest and soulful in her musical explorations. In these solo and duet pieces, each player shifts their roles accordingly, calling and responding to nuanced appeals for new sounds from their respective instruments. Freedman generates squawks and squalls on Aplomb that are rhythmic and damn near poetic. Two Depths is moodier, beginning with the Theremin-like bubbling of Thomson’s gurgling trombone, which suspends Freedman’s subtle accompaniment in the air before both instrumentalists begin bristling at one another in concert. Such physiological experiments, where the trombone, clarinet and bass clarinet each are ascribed with communicative traits usually reserved for braying organisms, continue on the stirring To Horn and the subdued big-band musings of Two Plums. Those with some knowledge of Freedman and Thomson’s work as individuals will likely appreciate Plumb the most but there’s certainly something vivacious about their interplay.

Du nouveau au catalogue de actuellecd! 4 albums de Barnyard Records: Piano Music, Little Man on the Boat, Plumb et Christmas Singalong Vol 5.

Bernard Falaise, Christine Duncan, Colin Fisher, Lori Freedman, Jean Martin, Evan Shaw et Scott Thomson seront en concert pour le lancement de 3 disques parus sous étiquette Barnyard Records dont Plumb. L’événement aura lieu le dimanche 23 mars 2008, à la Casa del Popolo, à Montréal.