Joelle Leandre, Theo Ceccaldi, Elastic

The liner notes by Stef Gijssels on the album today pretty much sum up the exceptional kind of new music improv heights achieved by contrabassist Joelle Leandre and violinist Theo Ceccaldi on Elastic (Cipsela 006). It is the thoroughgoing inspiration of two masters of their instruments coming up with a beautiful two-way sonance that hangs together as brilliant in-the-moment creations that are considerably more than a coincidental coincidence of two instrumentalists. It is more the magic of creation than simply "freeing" it up. After more than 50 years of freedom in the music realm we should expect the best matchups to go beyond. Here they most certainly do.

Joelle brings forward her multi-range bowing thoughts to second Theo's upper-range violin ideas while still holding down the bottom end. But there is considerably more going on. It's all about string tone, yes, beautifully so, and yet it is still about the notes so that we get a multi-dimensional expression, a total musical phenomenon.

Like a rubber band, the duo stretches what is possible in the listen-participation zone, so it's not idea and response so much as it is simultaneous double ideas that come into play. Beautifully so.

As a bass and violin improvisation set Joelle and Theo show us their phenomenal mastery and move us! Do not miss this one. It is breakthrough improv in all senses of the phrase!