Unfolding Louis Sclavis & Benjamin Moussay

• 1Unfolding06:16
• 2Loma del Tanto05:31
• 3None04:16
• 4A Garden in Ispahan04:12
• 5Siete lagunas02:49
• 6L’heure de loup03:16
• 7L’étendue04:41
• 8Somebody Leaves04:35
• 9Snow04:47
• Total Runtime40:23

Info for Unfolding

Having previously joined forces on several Louis Sclavis recordings for ECM, including the clarinettist’s last acclaimed album Characters On A Wall, more recently pianist Benjamin Moussay and Sclavis have increasingly shifted their focus onto two-way communication, playing expansive and well-received duo sets throughout Europe. Deutschlandfunk reported on one of their concerts with a rave review, suggesting, “this perfectly harmonising duo focuses on strong contrasts and thrives on empathy and intense exchanges.” Now, in a programme of exclusively originals – two-thirds from the pianist’s pen, the remaining third by the clarinettist – the French duo dreams up a world of chamber conversations that juxtaposes lyrical contemplation with whimsical inventiveness in a joyous, concentrated collaboration. On Unfolding the duo thoughtfully envelopes delicate themes in warm improvisations that never rush, but patiently explore the written material with rare creativity and in fluid dialogues.

“For this recording we composed exclusively new material,” notes Louis. “I wrote rather simple pieces that allow a lot of improvisation. Because as we've been playing together for over 20 years and in various different projects, we've gotten better and better at expressing ourselves as a duo through improvisation and letting go.”

Tense atmospheric balance acts, constructed upon fragile, slightly ambiguous harmonic foundations, the clarinettist and pianist’s compositions reveal prudent melodic movements, enveloped by a haunting obscurity that could draw from a broad range of inspirations – reaching from 20th century French composer and organist Olivier Messiaen on the one hand and the chamber elaborations of the legendary Jimmy Giuffre 3 on the other.

Opening the album is the Moussay-penned title cut “Unfolding”. A soft-spoken invocation, embellished with subtly dramatic changes, the duo’s innovative improvisational approach to this firmly structured theme is representative of the music to come throughout the programme. Benjamin’s “Loma del tanto” begins at a more spontaneous place, with the clarinet and piano reaching for another’s lines, before the downward spiralling melody of the coda is introduced.

A three-note motif with emphasis on an upward leap – first a ninth followed by an octave, then a major seventh followed by a minor sixth – forms the crux of “None”. Piano and clarinet are in tight embrace throughout the piece – as is the case during the course of much of the album. Instead of alternating solos or swapping comping and solo responsibilities rigidly, Sclavis and Moussay often take on melodic and harmonic improvisation simultaneously and, in an impressive display of control, never get in the way of the other. As Louis puts it, he and Benjamin “have developed a great complicity in our playing and a seamless synchronicity.”

Because of their seamless chemistry and openness to dive off a cliff into the unknown, the duo came to the session with only a rough idea of how the songs were to be performed – leaving room for another perspective to influence the outcome. “We came to the recording with ideas that weren’t too fixed yet. We wanted to work in close collaboration with Manfred Eicher and we knew that some of the compositions would take a direction we hadn't thought of and others wouldn't be kept. We prepared this album with this desire to rediscover our compositions with Manfred's producer-eye.”

“A Garden in Ispahan”, the first Sclavis piece on the album, is an elegant modal essay that gently juggles shadow and light, its pastel brush strokes bringing to mind French impressionism in both music and visual art. Continuing the modal streak, with echoes of Debussy’s whole-tone-scale idiom, on the clarinettist’s other original “Étendue” clustered piano chords and arpeggios, emphasized and sustained with the pedal, lay out an intriguing playground for cryptic melodies.

The remaining Sclavis tune “Somebody Leaves” could not bring more contrast to the session, with its Ornette Coleman-esque fanfare and overall early free jazz shape. Its Spanish counterpart, Benjamin’s “Sieta Lagunas”, introduces another rapid and memorable head-phrase followed by the duo’s fleet-footed improv-show.

Benjamin: “When writing for this project, I already had Louis in mind, and his unique voices on Bb and bass clarinet. The key when writing for a duo, and especially for someone you know very well, is to try and propose music that will inspire them, and that will seem natural to them. I also had the idea of a duet in mind: how can we use the orchestral potential? can we both be soloists? Accompanists? These are questions I contemplated but also tried to let go of, in order to let instinct speak.”

With no shortage of inspiration throughout the album, Louis appears particularly transported on “L’heure du Loup”, one of the album’s most sparse but also most mysterious duo conversations that brings the full range of Louis’s Bb clarinet to sing. “Snow” concludes the album on a sombre note, emphasizing both the idiosyncrasy of the players’ compositional voices and the deeply felt, long developed chemistry between them.

Unfolding was recorded at Studios La Buissonne, Southern France in March 2024.

Louis Sclavis, clarinet, bass clarinet
Benjamin Moussay, piano

Louis Sclavis
was born in 1953 in Lyon, where he studied clarinet at the music conservatory and performed in local bands on the side. During this time, Sclavis not only played in ensembles such as the Marvelous Band, Marmite Infernale and the Workshop of Lyon. He also made contact with colleagues such as Michel Portal, Bernard Lubat and Henri Texier, all of whom he was able to inspire for his musicians' initiative ARFI (Association pour la recherche d’un folklore imaginaire). It was the legendary birth of an attempt to combine traditional music with jazz. 1982 particularly showed Sclavis's unbridled imagination. On the one hand, he founded his own combo, Le Tour de France, with six musicians from various regions of France: Gerard Siracusa, Benat Achiary, Philippe Deschepper, Yves Robert, Michel Doneda and Alain Gibert. This was followed by recordings and performances with free music celebrities from Evan Parker to Tony Oxley and Peter Brötzmann. After numerous concerts at European festivals, he founded his quartet feat. Bruno Chevillon in 1984, with whom he recorded the ECM album “Rouge” (1991), among others; in 1987 the Sclavis Septet was formed exclusively for the Banlieues Blues Festival. With the clarinet trio feat. Jacques di Donato and Armand Angster, founded in 1988, Sclavis concentrated on improvisation and contemporary classical music, with compositions by Pierre Boulez and Brian Ferneyhough, and began to work with the choreographer Mathilde Monnier. And with whom he continued his love of theater, which was already evident in 1980 in his collaboration with the theater company Image Aigue. Since then, Sclavis has also become a sought-after film composer (including for Jean-Louis Comolli), and since 1982 he has put together numerous multi-media spectacles such as “Jazz comme une image” with the world-famous photographer Guy Le Querrec. Le Querrec is also the one who documents the musical journeys to Africa that Sclavis has been making with Aldo Romano and Henri Texier for several years. The decisive milestones in Sclavis' multilingual career are documented by the changing chamber music formations over the years, with the Acoustic Quartet of 1994 (Dominique Pifarely, Bruno Chevillon, Marc Ducret) building on previous successes and all of them being represented on ECM. The same applies to the trio founded in 1994 with B. Chevillon and Francois Merville. Sclavis has received numerous awards during his career: the Prix Django Reinhardt (1988), 1st Prize at the Barcelona Biennale (1989), British Jazz Award (1990).

Benjamin Moussay
first graduated in classical piano at the Strasbourg Conservatory, before devoting his keyboard exploration to jazz and other improvised contexts. A frequent collaborator on ECM recordings of Louis Sclavis and Vincent Courtois (Sources, Silk and Salt Melodies, West, Characters On A Wall), Benjamin has developed into an indispensable pianistic voice in Europe. His piano solo debut for ECM Promontoire (2020) was awarded the “Coup de Coeur” by Académie Charles Cros and praised by the critics: “an exceptional album” – Le Monde; “a series of free improvisations that often sound like perfectly plotted miniatures” – The Guardian; an indispensable composer whose reputation will one day rival that of his illustrious predecessors – Télérama.

Booklet for Unfolding