L'imparfait des Langues | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
![]() | ||||
Studio album by | ||||
Released | 2007 | |||
Recorded | April 2005 | |||
Studio | Studios la Buissonne Pernes-les-Fontaines | |||
Genre | Avant-garde jazz | |||
Length | 56:03 | |||
Label | ECM ECM 1954 | |||
Producer | Manfred Eicher, Louis Sclavis | |||
Louis Sclavis chronology | ||||
|
Review scores | |
---|---|
Source | Rating |
All About Jazz | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
AllMusic | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
The Guardian | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
L'imparfait des langues ("The Imperfection of Language") is an album by French jazz musician Louis Sclavis, recorded in April 2005 and released by ECM in 2007, his fifth for label, and twelfth overall.
Sclavis had received a commission to premiere a new project at the Monaco Festival Le Printemps des Arts in Monte Carlo, in April 2005. Having put together an ensemble, Sclavis sketched the compositions for L'imparfait des langues in ten days. The concert was cancelled at short notice due to the death of Monaco's Prince Rainier. Without a venue, Sclavis and his group booked into a recording studio in Pernes-les-Fontaines and recorded the music in a single day. [5]
Sclavis was keen to challenge his compositional habits and brought together an ensemble with which he had had little previous experience. [5] The players were not "pure jazz", but worked in many different styles of music. Structurally, many of the pieces are based on short 8 or 16-bar phrases and equal emphasis is placed on texture and sound as well as melody. The album has a wide textural diversity, from the "aggressive improvisation" of "L'idée du dialecte" and the Sonic Youth-style overdriven guitar of Maxime Delpierre's "Convocation" to the heavily processed vocals of "Annonce" and the repetitive "Le verbe." [6]
All compositions by Louis Sclavis, except "Premier imparfait «a»" and "Premier imparfait «b»" by Louis Sclavis and Paul Brousseau and "Convocation" by Maxime Delpierre.
René Lussier is a jazz guitarist based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He is a composer, guitarist, bass guitarist, percussionist, bass clarinetist, and singer. Lussier has collaborated with Fred Frith, Chris Cutler, Jean Derome, and Robert M. Lepage. He combines elements from several genres and is often referred to within the discourse of contemporary classical music or Musiques Actuelles in French.
Louis Sclavis is a French jazz musician. He performs on clarinet, bass clarinet, and soprano saxophone in a variety of contexts, including avant-garde jazz, free jazz, free improvisation and contemporary classical.
Aldo Romano is an Italian jazz drummer. He also founded a rock group in 1971.
Dominique Pifarély is a French jazz violinist. He works in avant-garde jazz, but he has also worked in post-bop and other contexts.
Bow River Falls is the 22nd album by trumpeter Dave Douglas. It was released on the Koch label in 2004 and features performances by Douglas, Louis Sclavis, Peggy Lee, and Dylan van der Schyff.
Pierre-Yves Borgeaud is a Swiss film director. Borgeaud has a bachelor's degree in arts at the Lausanne University in 1990, with a thesis about the influence of jazz on French writers. He has worked as an independent journalist, writing about music and moving images in different media. He also played the drums in jazz and funk bands and worked as a music producer.
L'Affrontement des prétendants is an album by French clarinetist Louis Sclavis recorded in September 1999 and released on ECM in 2001.
Dans la nuit is a soundtrack by French clarinetist Louis Sclavis recorded in October 2000 and released on ECM in 2002. The album was initialized through an invitation of French director Bertrand Tavernier to Sclavis, he agreed and wrote this music to Charles Vanel's 1929 film Dans la nuit.
Napoli's Walls is an album by French clarinetist Louis Sclavis recorded in December 2002 and released on ECM the following year.
Lost on the Way is an album by French clarinetist and composer Louis Sclavis recorded in September 2008 and released on ECM the following year.
Raccolto is an album by Italian pianist Stefano Battaglia recorded in September and December of 2003 and released on ECM in 2005.
Jean-Louis Matinier is a leading contemporary accordion player in the fields of jazz and world music.
Vincent Peirani is a French jazz accordionist, vocalist and composer who has played internationally, collaborating with Denis Colin, François Jeanneau, Youn Sun Nah, Émile Parisien, Michel Portal, Louis Sclavis, and Michael Wollny, among others.
Fleuve is the second album credited to the Pierre Favre Ensemble, recorded in Switzerland in October 2005 and released on ECM October the following year—twenty two years after the ensemble's 1984 debut, Singing Drums, presenting a new line-up that departed from the previous incarnation's all-percussion sound. The septet now included harp, double clarinet, double bass, tuba, guitar, bass guitar, soprano saxophone, and serpent—an instrument rarely used in jazz.
Orchestre National de Jazz was created by French Ministry of Culture in 1986. In more than three decades, this institution has played a large part in the institutional and cultural legitimization of jazz, notably in offering a vast panorama of the French creation. The Orchestra has seen 12 successive musical and artistic directors, welcomed more than 200 soloists and invited numerous international artists, recorded 33 albums. Orchestre National de Jazz received many awards including Victoires du Jazz in 2009 and 2020 and was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2012 for the album Shut Up And Dance composed by John Hollenbeck.
Silk and Salt Melodies is a jazz studio album by French musician Louis Sclavis with Benjamin Moussay, Gilles Coronado and Keyvan Chemirani under the name Louis Sclavis Quartet. This jazz album was released in ECM Records label in August 2014.
You've Been Watching Me is an album by the American composer and saxophonist Tim Berne's Snakoil which was released on the ECM label in 2015.
Jacques Di Donato is a French musician and improviser. A clarinetist, saxophonist and drummer, he works in various fields ranging from jazz to contemporary music, classical music and improvised music. He was a clarinet teacher at the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Lyon between 1984 and 2007.
Rouge is an album by French jazz musician Louis Sclavis, recorded in 1991 and released in 1992 on the ECM label. It was reissued in 2006 and 2019.
Berlin Djungle is a live album by the Brötzmann Clarinet Project, led by Peter Brötzmann, and featuring an eleven-piece band that was assembled for a concert at JazzFest Berlin. Documenting a performance of a single 47-minute work, it was recorded on November 4, 1984, at the Delphi Theater in Berlin, and was released on vinyl in 1987 by FMP/Free Music Production. In 2004, it was reissued on CD by Atavistic Records as part of their Unheard Music Series. On the album, Brötzmann is joined by clarinetists Tony Coe, J.D. Parran, Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky, Louis Sclavis, and John Zorn, trumpeter Toshinori Kondo, trombonists Alan Tomlinson and Johannes Bauer, double bassist William Parker, and drummer Tony Oxley.