Damon Smith + Peter Kowald, Joëlle Léandre & Bertram Turetzky - Bass Duos 2000​-​2007 (January 15, 2021 Balance Point Acoustics)

I met Joëlle Léandre when she was a visiting professor at Mills college in 2002. This was very exciting, as I had been collecting her albums since I started to play the double bass and she was an important influence on my work. I had a bass lesson scheduled with her the day we lost Maestro Kowald. She was very close to him and it was devastating to her. For me, it meant losing a role model; for her, it was losing a close friend and supporter. We had a long phone conversation and she told me many stories about him. A few days later, Henry Kaiser graciously offered to let me record a solo for Kowald in his home studio. I thought a bass duo with Joëlle would be more fitting and I believe it was. Still, the sadness surrounding the session kept us from dealing with it for many years. I would get it out and try to consider track order or titles, maybe email Joëlle about it, and that would be the extent. Both her work and his remain a guide for me as I continue my work in the music. I am glad to finally get this session out into the world!

The reason I started playing music was because of seeing the great Mike Watt play with the band fIREHOSE. His extremely physical and multi-textured approach to the bass guitar logically pushed me to improvised music and the double bass. In the 1990s I had formed a bass quartet with George Cremaschi, Lincoln Smith, and Morgan Gubberman and we decided to ask Watt for a composition for our next performance. Watt replied saying he has lots of compositions and that he would just come up and play them with us. The music he brought consisted of his pieces from the monumental minutemen album Double Nickels on the Dime. I am a bit too young to have seen the minutemen so this was an incredible experience: the first time I heard these songs live was playing them with Watt! I should mention that Watt's bass duo DOS, with the great Black Flag bassist Kira Roessler, is now his longest running band and the first time I ever heard a bass duo was one of their albums! We got quite a nice guarantee for the show and I asked Watt if we could spend half of it bringing Bertram on board.

Watt was excited by the idea! Bert was into playing a rock club and said "I used to play places where you had to check your guns and knives at the door. It will be great!" At the show a punk rocker yelled, "Play louder" during a break in his set that night. Bert replied, ”You listen louder.” I ended up getting lessons from Bert, organizing many Bay Area concerts and workshops for him, and we developed a friendship. For me as a young bassist, he was very generous with his time. His commitment to improvised music was very inspiring as was his tireless effort to catalog the available timbres and techniques for the instrument, resulting in his book The Contemporary Contrabass. Originally meant as a resource for composers, it is an incredible guide for improvisors trying to deepen their relationship to the instrument. During a phone conversation one of us casually suggested a duo album. The magnitude of recording with this master did not sink in until just a few days beforehand! It was originally released in an edition of 100 CDRs that sold out pretty quickly.

These experiences are formative for me and have shaped the way I work with the instrument in improvised music. Not everyone has the opportunity to go directly to the source of the area they are working in, and these duos are certainly the source for me. Dave Holland and Barre Phillips made the first improvised double bass duo LP. It seems to me that Kowald's series of three LPs on FMP with Barre Phillips, Maarten van Regteren Altena and Barry Guy solidified it as a working method, and this meant having the duo as an available format in which I could work. My longest running bass duo is with the Texas bassist Thomas Helton, and hopefully an album will come out of our work as well.

Damon Smith

1. Peter Kowald & Damon Smith - Broken Mirrors April 28th 1 15:34

2. Peter Kowald & Damon Smith - Broken Mirrors April 28th 2 16:07

3. Peter Kowald & Damon Smith - Reflections on April 28th 1 03:45

4. Peter Kowald & Damon Smith - Reflections on April 28th 2 03:58

5. Peter Kowald & Damon Smith - Reflections on April 28th 3 03:12

6. Peter Kowald & Damon Smith - Reflections on April 28th 4 04:38

7. Peter Kowald & Damon Smith - Reflections on April 28th 5 02:32

8. Peter Kowald & Damon Smith - Reflections on April 28th 6 03:57

9. Peter Kowald & Damon Smith - Reflections on April 28th 7 07:20

10. Joëlle Léandre & Damon Smith - Throw off the Husk 04:35

11. Joëlle Léandre & Damon Smith - Ancestor & the Future 03:04

12. Joëlle Léandre & Damon Smith - Lost & Lucid 03:24

13. Joëlle Léandre & Damon Smith - Time Dries Up (DS solo) 01:18

14. Joëlle Léandre & Damon Smith - Mirrors Without Dust 02:34

15. Joëlle Léandre & Damon Smith - Uweaving the Threads (JL solo) 04:50

16. Joëlle Léandre & Damon Smith - Listening to the Same Blood 02:46

17. Joëlle Léandre & Damon Smith - Hive of Instants (DS solo) 02:19

18. Joëlle Léandre & Damon Smith - Building our Erosions 03:31

19. Joëlle Léandre & Damon Smith - Flowers Without Venom 03:05

20. Joëlle Léandre & Damon Smith - Unfingers its Grasp 04:22

21. Joëlle Léandre & Damon Smith - Sky Without Birds 01:58

22. Bertram Turetzky & Damon Smith - Vulturegrip 04:12

23. Bertram Turetzky & Damon Smith - Coalmarked 10:37

24. Bertram Turetzky & Damon Smith - Chalkravine 06:35

25. Bertram Turetzky & Damon Smith - Woodsong 02:05

26. Bertram Turetzky & Damon Smith - Slickensides 06:14

27. Bertram Turetzky & Damon Smith - Southbright 10:51

28. Bertram Turetzky & Damon Smith - Northtrue 08:27

Damon Smith Bass Duos

Peter Kowald 2000

Joëlle Léandre 2002

Bertram Turetzky 2007

Disc One:

Peter Kowald double bass

Damon Smith double bass

Broken mirrors:

Recorded on 28 April 2000 at Gallery 2310 Oakland, California; this is one piece with an index point for convenience only.

Reflections on April 28th 2000:

Recorded on 3 May 2000 in Oakland, California

Remastered by Weasel Walter 2021

Front cover drawing (reproduced above) by Peter Kowald; design by Kowald and Jürgen Schäfer.

Disc Two:

Joëlle Léandre double bass

Damon Smith Jdouble bass

Recorded by Henry Kaiser September 2002

DAT transfer by Ryan Edwards

Mixed by Maikol Seminatore 2020

Mastered by Weasel Walter

Titles from English translations of poems by Andrée Chedid

Disc Three:

Bertram Turetzky double bass

Damon Smith double bass.

Remastered by Weasel Walter 2021

Recorded on 11 November 2007 at 1510 8th St. Performance Space, Oakland, California, tracks 1-5 in studio, tracks 6-7 live.

Front cover photograph (reproduced above) by Damon Smith; design by Alan Anzalone.

Titles are English translation of invented German compound words by Paul Celan

Front cover drawing by Peter Kowald

Overall design by Allen Anzalone

Thanks to Clifford Allen for editing help!

PDF of full cover art & liner notes including the original Mirrors, Broken, But No Dust notes included with all downloads

PRE-ORDER

Joëlle Léandre - At Souillac en Jazz (November 30, 2021 Ayler Records)

This solo by Joëlle Léandre concentrates an energy coming out of the depths of the earth, right from the first strokes of the bow. The huge sound, instantly gripping the body, is overwhelming far beyond the music, an experience so strong that tears flow when it comes to the sung parts. From the depths of the ages, evocative of a Native American medicine woman, an Inuit shaman, voodoo priestess or even blues woman, extracting with bare hands her strings rooted in clay, transcending the sound of her double bass, she awakens a thousand-year-old buried 'collective unconscious' with her voice of trance, inviting ancestral spirits to a form of resistance to fight all the injustices of the world, piercing with sound and love the hearts of both aficionados dreaming of impossible musical utopias and of novices stunned by her visceral “duende”.

(from Christian Pouget's liner notes)

1. Calès I

2. Calès II

3. Calès III

4. Calès IV

5. Calès V

6. Calès VI

7. Calès VII

8. Calès VIII 

Joëlle Léandre - double bass, voice

Recorded live by Christian Pouget on July 18th, 2021 in the Saint-Jacques church of Calès, Lot, France. Tracks #7 & 8 were recorded during a private after-set, once the audience had left.

Mixed and mastered by Maïkôl Seminatore.

All comprovisations by Joëlle Léandre.

Cover artwork by Bénédicte Gallois & Stéphane Berland.

PREORDER

Joëlle Léandre & Marc Ducret - Chez Hélène (AYLER RECORDS 2018)

Marc Ducret, electric guitar

Joëlle Léandre, double bass

1. Observation 14:41

2. Ponctuation 07:57

3. Vibration 10:10

4. Invocation 10:51

Recorded live by Jean-Marc Foussat on May 13, 2018

at "19PaulFort", Paris, France

Produced by Stéphane Berland

Elisabeth Harnik & Joëlle Léandre – Tender Music (TROST RECORDS 2018)

That’s another one great avant-garde jazz album, which was recorded by a duo – Elisabeth Harnik (piano) and Joelle Leandre (bass). These two avant-garde jazz musicians are famous and active members of contemporary avant-garde jazz scene. Both of them have interesting, specific and unique playing style, which is based on colorful musical language, expressive and sudden stylistic turns and huge amount of different musical expressions. Elisabeth Harnik and Joelle Leandre are experienced and creative improvisers – both of them had improvised together with many other famous jazz masters. Avant-garde jazz, bebop, post-bop, hard-bop, experimental music, soft intonations of academic avant-garde and contemporary academical music – all these elements are gently synthesized together in one place.

Creative and fascinating sound experiments, impressive and original musical decisions, rich, evocative and expressive musical language, vivacious, energetic and free improvisations, filled with spontaneous and rapid solos – all these elements are the basics of their improvisations. This album is a great opportunity to hear two outstanding jazz masters playing together.

“Tender Music” has evocative, innovative and interesting sound. The improvisations are always changing, they are based on many different styles, manners, expressions and the opposite episodes, which are highly contrasting with each other. Both musicians are improvising masterfully and splendidly – they fuse together colorful and sudden stylistic twists, expressive and spontaneous solos, rapid and acitve collective improvisations, subtle and abstract pieces, turbulent and dramatic culminations and many other elements. Elisabeth Harnik piano improvisations are based on contrasts and unusual musical decisions. Different moods, expressions, characters and other elements of musical language are connected in her improvisations. Piano improvisations are especially expressive, free, spontaneous, creative and vivacious.

Rapid, wild fast and furious solos, harsh and loud separate dissonances, virtuosic and rapid passages, passionate and touching solos, vivacious and playful or very rigorous and sharp episodes – Elisabeth Harnik really knows how to connect all these contrasting music elements in effective and passionate way. Her playing is always balancing between various playing techniques, specific manners and expressions. Rapid, sharp and dynamic solos, which are based on bebop and hard-bop finally grow to dramatic, loud, powerful and vibrant collective improvisations with spontaneeous, expressive and emotional solos.

Her music is balancing somewhere between expressive, playful, joyful and energetic improvisations and abstract, subtle and silent improvisations. Joelle Leandre bass improvisations also is the set of experimental playing techniques, various moods, emotions and chords, special effects, unusual timbres, strange sounds and evocative musical decisions. She can silmunateously use various and experimental ways of playing – huge range of experimental and extraordinary playing techniques are gently connected together with pizzicatto, glissando, portato and many others traditional and very well-known ways of playing. Her playing also is very colorful and contrasting – from the silent, meditative, nostalgic and soft sound this music suddenly gets to dramatic, rapid, vibrant, deep and dynamic solos. Passionate and expressive melodies are conected together dynamic rhythmic and harmony. Rich, colorful and impressive improvising, passionate solos, masterful and creative jazz masters, evocative musical language – all these elements make an effort to interesting and innovative sound.

Elisabeth Harnik - piano

Joëlle Léandre - bass

Mastered - Jean Marc Foussat

Artwork - Lasse Marhaug

Linernotes - Ken Vandermark

1 Ear Area I

2 Ear Area II

3 Ear Area I

4 Ear Area IV

5 Ear Area V

6 Ear Area VI

Joëlle Léandre 10 - Can You Hear Me? (2016)

Source & Label: Ayler Records

This hybrid piece, where for the first time the musician has agreed to play the problematic role and function of ‘composer’, can be read both as a form of achievement and as a founding act.
Indeed, ‘composing’, as she makes it clear here, with the structure constantly generating and encouraging individual expression, is nothing else for her than a transposition to ‘another stage’ of the improviser’s gesture and a transfusion into a band’s plural entity of the complex spread of a thought both intimate and collective, made even more unique by its will to be shared. […] Because she constantly feeds all her experience as an improviser into her writing, Léandre has clearly created, with "Can You Hear Me?", a major milestone in her already illustrious career.
(from Stéphane Ollivier’s liner notes)  

1. Can You Hear Me? 04:45
2. Can You Hear Me? 05:28
3. Can You Hear Me? 04:35
4. Can You Hear Me? 06:47
5. Can You Hear Me? 05:51
6. Can You Hear Me? 06:15
7. Can You Hear Me? 06:45
8. Can You Hear Me? 03:29
9. Can You Hear Me? 04:10
10.Can You Hear Me? (complete) 48:09
   

Jean-Luc Cappozzo, trumpet
Alexandra Grimal, saxophones
Jean-Brice Godet, clarinets
Christiane Bopp, trombone
Guillaume Aknine, electric guitar
Théo Ceccaldi, violin
Séverine Morfin, viola
Valentin Ceccaldi, cello
Joëlle Léandre, double-bass
Florian Satche, drums, percussion

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