François Bourassa Quartet shoot Number 9 narratives at The Blue Arrow, Glasgow
Wednesday, February 6, 2019
This intimate space in Glasgow’s recently opened hub of jazz activity in the city’s Sauchiehall Street boasts a sound system of which the owners are rightfully proud.
Québécois pianist François Bourassa’s group exploited the speakers’ fullest potential, making an almost physical connection between their highly characterful music and the audience.
Opening with the lead-off track from their latest album, Number 9, ‘Carla and Karlheinz’ carried the Monk tradition of angularity and twisted melodicism forward in a bold powerful package, the quartet immediately registered a close-knit understanding, with Guillaume Pilot (here on drums instead of Greg Ritchie who plays on the album), creating a feel of perpetual motion that acknowledged all the composition’s accents, while driving the music forward with purpose.
A significant part of Number 9’s appeal is the clarinet playing of André Leroux. He was restricted here to flute and tenor sax, yet the inherently dark, brooding atmosphere of pieces such as ‘Frozen’ remained intact, while the suspense introduced by Bourassa and bassist Guy Boisvert’s simple descending motif on ‘Past Ich’, made for compelling listening as Pilot changed from sticks to brushes to fingertips in pursuit of the ideal accompaniment to the changing mood of Leroux’s extemporising.
All four musicians improvise strongly, but the music is presented in such a way that any solos are part of a piece’s overall narrative. Written for an artistic retreat Bourassa went on, ‘18, Rue de L’Hôtel de Ville’ conveyed the group’s gift for creating tension and release, before bringing the music to a satisfying conclusion, the final notes fading into the night.
– Rob Adams