Across the past five decades Henri Texier has helped to shape the developing aesthetic of European jazz. He's also performed alongside many of the greats of US jazz, including Don Cherry, Bud Powell and, as on the live Paris-Batignolles disc here, Joe Lovano. His musical relationship with fellow Frenchman Louis Sclavis has been a rich one: the reedsman was a mainstay of Texier's Quartet and brings his distinctive wit and fluency to both 1980s recordings now reissued by Label Bleu. La Compañera moves between the jazz-rock fusion of ‘Não Incomodar’, the roaring free-improv of ‘Resistance’ (presumably that's Texier himself you can hear grunting along during a fine solo double-bass passage) and the more straightforwardly boppish moods of ‘Zum Beispiel’ and ‘Terra Negra’ (one of two tracks that feature trumpeter Michel Marre). Sclavis is paired with Lovano on the second disc, where the quartet-plus-guest are on splendidly unpredictable form, moving between the loose textures, free workouts and controlled cacophony of ‘Baton Rouge’ and ‘Grillage’, the parping, driving ‘La Louisiane’ and the romantic balladry of the title track.