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When the London jazz festival ran online only in 2020, an enthralling livestreamed performance by Swiss harpist Julie Campiche’s avant-jazz ensemble was a startling highlight, introducing UK audiences to a virtuoso instrumentalist and composer who was already turning heads in Europe. Campiche plucked guitar, zither and east Asian-style sounds from the harp, mingled with vocal loops, classical music, Nordic ambient jazz and more. You might call her soundscape magical or otherworldly if it didn’t coexist with a campaigner’s political urgency on environmental and social issues. But Campiche is too much of a visionary to overwhelm the eloquence of pure sound with polemic, as her new album, the unaccompanied Unspoken, confirms more than ever.
Campiche’s extra-musical agenda here is a celebration of sisterhood, dedicated to women in public and private lives who have inspired her. The opening Anonymous is built around a Virginia Woolf quote – “for most of history, ‘anonymous’ was a woman” – repeated by a chorus of women’s voices in different languages building to a clamour. Grisélidis Réal is named after the Swiss artist and writer who took her physical and mental life to every precipice, including sex work, expressed in gently lyrical harp lines around the spooky sounds of footsteps clicking on pavements.
Rosa is a lilting harp melody dedicated to the weary resolve of migrant workers, the rhythm-shifting Andréa Bescond a lissome tribute to the French actor and director and on Maman du Ciel, Campiche mesmerisingly uses her in- and out-breaths as the rhythm pattern. Unspoken is the least jazzy of the remarkable Campiche’s ventures so far, but if she didn’t inhabit a world of improvisers, she could never have imagined it like this.
Also out this month
New York avant-jazz pianist Craig Taborn surfaced in the late 90s with leaders including Tim Berne and Steve Coleman, but his own work has blossomed in the 21st century. With Dream Archives (ECM), in a trio with cello star Tomeka Reid and percussionist/composer Ches Smith, he embraces fast-moving collective free-swing, smouldering lyrical originals and two heartfelt tributes (Paul Motian’s Mumbo Jumbo and Geri Allen’s When Kabuya Dances). The trumpeter Airelle Besson, a luminary of French jazz, further nurtures her long relationship with accordionist Lionel Suárez on Blossom (Bretelles Prod/Papillon Jaune), a mainstream but delightful mix of jaunty and tender originals, and affectionate covers of Carla Bley’s Ida Lupino and the Pat Metheny/Lyle Mays song Au Lait. And gifted young UK pianist/composer Noah Stoneman continues his steady rise with Dance at Zero, ingenious transformations of his minuscule compositions into rich improvisations in the company of fast-rising young saxophonist Emma Rawicz, bassist Freddie Jensen and UK jazz drum maestro James Maddren.
