This double-disc, featuring two performances recorded on consecutive nights in 2009 and released now to mark Léandre's 60th birthday, provides a neat overview of the French double-bass player's musical persona. Although best known as an improviser, Léandre has a parallel interest in contemporary classical, and these two sets fuse those worlds beautifully. Disc One features a tentet, incorporating string quartet, horn section and jazz/rock instrumentation, playing an hour-long piece entitled ‘Can You Hear Me.’ It clearly follows a score – moving smartly through distinct chapters of crystalline, Xenakis-like tones, jerky rock and blustery free-jazz, with Léandre's operatic vocals and free-associating spoken word thrown in too. It's a dense, gripping piece, almost Braxton-esque in its scope and ambition. By contrast, Disc Two is a slender wisp: a single improvisation by the trio of Léandre, pianist John Tilbury and percussionist Kevin Norton, which circles right back to Léandre's formative encounters with minimalist composer Morton Feldman in the 1970s. It's a delicate, leisurely work of beauty that hangs in the same attenuated cosmic/atomic regions as Feldman's Piano & String Quartet. Either one of these discs would make an essential release. To get them both together is a generous gift indeed.