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Joëlle Léandre

Joelle Leandre started playing recorder but quickly moved to piano and from the age of 9 to 14 studied both piano and double bass in her home town of Aix-en-Provence. Her double bass teacher, Pierre Delescluse, encouraged her to apply to the Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique de Paris where she won first prize for double bass. In 1976 she received a scholarship to the Center for Creative and Performing Arts in Buffalo, a time that was to prove particularly influential due to encounters with Morton Feldman, and the music of Earl Brown, John Cage and Giacinto Scelsi. At the same time, she was able to experience the downtown New York music scene and continue her involvement in improvised music.

Joelle Leandre has continued to be involved with contemporary 'straight' music, not only as a member of contemporary music ensembles such as 2E2M, Itineraire and l'Ensemble Intercontemporain but particularly through the works of Cage and Scelsi, several of which have been recorded by her. Of Cage, she told Machart (1994):

"He will always be my spiritual father. I had already read For the birds before meeting him. It is an important book. John made me listen to the world around me: 'Let sound be what it is'. He opened up a field of possibilities; he gave me confidence; he cooked for me (he was a very good cook), with his friend Cunningham; he was good. A friend. He was the first to smile when I played my piece Taxi in the hall at Columbia University—I can still remember it!"

And, to the same interviewer on Scelsi:

"Another meeting; as important as meeting Cage; he respected the freedom of my actions; there was almost a feminine intimacy between us. His music overwhelmed me; it is one of the truest, because it speaks to us of our conscience, of our human condition. When I listen to this music it affects me most deeply. There isn't a 'geography' to it; there are waves which we make vibrate. I love to play his several pieces for double bass because they provide me with a complete soundworld. This music is paradoxical because it is at once complex and simple. I have known Scelsi since 1978, in Rome, after a stay at Buffalo University where I discovered Okanagon, one of his most extraordinary pieces. We rapidly became friends. Ten years later, I was there, on the 8 August 1988, at his death. It was as if he just faded away."

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12
In Pictures

Vision Festival 2023

Read "Vision Festival 2023" reviewed by Luciano Rossetti


A collection of photos from the Vision Festival in New York City from June 13 to 18, 2023, dedicated to Joelle Leandre, featuring Craig Taborn, Myra Melford, William Parker, Dave Burrell, Joe McPhee, Reggie Workman, Ben Lamar Gay, Mike Reed, Kahil El'Zabar, Mark Dresser, Marty Ehrlich, Silvia Bolognesi and many others. ...

5
Live Review

Vilnius Mama Jazz Festival 2023

Read "Vilnius Mama Jazz Festival 2023" reviewed by John Sharpe


Vilnius Mama Jazz Festival State Youth Theater Vilnius, Lithuania May 25-28, 2023 Introduction Now the largest city in the Baltic States, the Lithuanian capital jny: Vilnius once again hosted the Mama Jazz Festival for its 23rd edition. While booking acts which might please a wide range of music lovers, the Festival focused on prominent women in jazz for this year's event. Fitting, really, as the founder and driving force behind the whole extravaganza is ...

Album Review

Joëlle Léandre: Beauty/Resistance

Read "Beauty/Resistance" reviewed by Neri Pollastri


Maestra e icona dell'improvvisazione europea, Joëlle Léandre è un'artista non facile da incontrare nei festival nostrani, forse per la sua irriducibilità alle etichette con le quali si è soliti catalogare i musicisti, forse perchè autrice sempre di una musica senza compromessi. Prezioso perciò questo cofanetto edito nel 2021, anno del suo settantesimo compleanno, dalla coraggiosa label NotTwo, dedita principalmente alla documentazione delle performance improvvisative. La confezione cartonata include tre CD di formazioni diverse nelle quali la sola a ...

3
Album Review

Damon Smith, Peter Kowald, Joëlle Léandre & Bertram Turetzky: Bass Duos 2000​-​2007

Read "Bass Duos 2000​-​2007" reviewed by Jeff Schwartz


One function of recordings is to document a performer's development. Damon Smith's Bass Duos 2000-2007 not only captures his artistic and technical evolution, his choice of duet partners represents the expanded options for the bass in creative music since the 1960s. Two of the three discs in this set were previously released, but they have been remastered by Weasel Walter. The unreleased disc is excellent and, as Smith highlights in his liner notes, the combination of these ...

5
Album Review

Joëlle Léandre: Zurich Concert

Read "Zurich Concert" reviewed by Mark Corroto


A solo concert by the double bassist Joëlle Léandre is a happening, an event of the highest order. She is very much like a writer or poet who starts with a blank sheet of paper, bringing to life characters and places seemingly drawn from thin air. Of course, like the writer, Léandre's alchemy is born out of years of study, practice, and performance. From her roots in the south of France, she studied classical music before training and performing in ...

4
Album Review

Joëlle Léandre / Evan Parker / Agustí Fernández / Zlatko Kaučič: A Uiš?

Read "A Uiš?" reviewed by John Sharpe


Though the instrumentation on A Uiš evokes the classic jazz quartet, the outcome resides a world away from that tradition. To celebrate 40 years as a professional musician, Slovenian drummer Zlatko Kaučič assembled a quartet of top drawer improvisers for a 45-minute collectively navigated journey, recorded live at the jazz festival in his home town of Cernko in 2018. Each boasts an unrivalled track record and the discography to prove it. Each is a groundbreaking leader. British saxophonist Evan Parker ...

5
Album Review

Tiger Trio: Unleashed

Read "Unleashed" reviewed by John Sharpe


Three leading exponents of their instruments unite on Unleashed. Since their first collaboration in Vancouver in 2009, French bassist Joëlle Léandre and American flutist Nicole Mitchell have enjoyed a simpatico outlook, as evidenced by a clutch of Rogue Art releases including Before After (2011) and Sisters Where (2014), as well as Flowing Stream (Leo, 2014). Joining them on this occasion, pianist Myra Melford fully buys in to the freewheeling collective approach aired in a Paris gallery in early 2016.

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57

Recording

Joelle Leandre and India Cooke - Journey (Nobusiness Records, 2010)

Joelle Leandre and India Cooke - Journey (Nobusiness Records, 2010)

Source: Music and More by Tim Niland

It is always exciting when two musicians get together to improvise in real time. Violinist India Cooke and bassist Joelle Leandre performed live in Denver during an academic conference called “Improvisation and Identity: Discovering Self and Community in a Trans-Cultural Age," and their duet was the perfect choice to reflect the nature of the proceedings musically. Spontaneously composed and improvised, their performance is suite called Journey, broken for the sake of programming into six sections. The music develops like the ...

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Interview

Bassist Joelle Leandre Interviewed at AAJ

Bassist Joelle Leandre Interviewed at AAJ

Source: All About Jazz

"You're playing like Jimi Hendrix." That was the nicest compliment that French bassist Jolle Landre received in her first tour of Israel and the Palestinian Authority in late November, 2007. Landre's last solo concert was in Ramallah before an attentive audience that was mostly unfamiliar with her rsum as one of the most creative musicians of the last forty years. “I was on fire that concert," she tells. “Maybe like Hendrix."

Landre is one of those rare musicians that, for ...

Photos

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Zurich Concert

Intakt Records
2024

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Storm Dance

Not Two Records
2024

buy

Beauty/Resistance

NotTwo Records
2021

buy

Bass Duos...

Balance Point Acoustics
2021

buy

A Uiš?

Not Two Records
2020

buy

A Woman's Work...

Not Two Records
2017

buy

3rd Variation for Clarinet and Contrabass

From: That Overt Desire of Object
By Joëlle Léandre

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