John Fordham 

Émile Parisien Quintet/Joachim Kühn: Sfumato review – exuberant genre-hopping

  
  

Émile Parisien (second from left) with Joachim Kühn (centre) and band.
Captivating remakes of US and European jazz tradition … Émile Parisien (second from left) with Joachim Kühn (centre) and band. Photograph: Manfred Rinderspacher

French saxophonist Émile Parisien, instigator of some of the most musical, formidably skilful yet wackily diverting adventures in recent European jazz, makes a rare UK visit in a duo at November’s London jazz festival, but this exuberant album rams home the full Parisien experience, with a new quintet, regular accordion partner Vincent Peirani, and two revered European elder statesmen in German pianist Joachim Kühn and French bass clarinet original Michel Portal. From the opening vibrato-trembling soprano sax Préambule (Parisien can be a spiky avantist, but he’s a devoted Sidney Bechet admirer, too), through the hard-swinging Poulp – which sounds like the work of a 21st-century Hot Club band with Ornette Coleman leanings – through the contemporary-noir doom-walk of Brainmachine or the accordion-throbbing Umckaloabo, Parisien leads an exhilarating genre-hop bubbling with captivating remakes of US and European jazz traditions. And Kühn, a majestic soloist inside or outside conventional harmony, sounds as if he’s been an instantly responsive communicator with this lineup – and particularly the leader – for years.

Watch teaser video for Sfumato
 

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