DANS LES ARBRES (FRANCE/NORWAY) (9pm)

ECM Records artists Dans Les Arbres are making some of the most engaging, mysterious and beautiful music in the field of improvisation.

Nominated for the prestigious Nordic Music Prize in 2015, the idiosyncratic French-Norwegian ensemble combines airy, wooden, metallic sounds, prepared strings and tampered drum heads. Their strange sound world and their fine sense of communication lead to collective playing and spontaneous group-composing in a class of its own.

Since recording their first album in 2006, Dans Les Arbres has performed more than 120 concerts around the globe. Their two subsequent ECM Records albums received praise from reviewers and audiences alike.

They’ve been joined by guest musicians such as Yumiko Tanaka, Otomo Yoshihide, Jim O´Rourke, Norwegian duo Vilde & Inga and The Norwegian Wind Ensemble. In 2015 they drew mainstream national attention from their performance with the Oslo Sinfonietta of Hellstenius’s About Nature at the Oslo Opera House.

Most apparent in the band’s 2017 release Phosphorescence is how masterful the four members of the collective have now become, and how intensely focused in their work, secure in the group’s identity as a kind of ‘supergroup’ making absolutely contemporary music that’s completely peerless.

Even the range of sounds they choose to inhabit has taken on a satisfying sense of familiarity: Dans Les Arbres make Dans Les Arbres music out of Dans Les Arbres sounds. It is, all in all, a considerable achievement.

“Dans Les Arbres must be one of the finest ECM improv releases – indeed, releases from any label – in recent years” - The Wire

 “Highly unusual, extremely beautiful, utterly bizarre while still being accessible” - Free Jazz Blog

XAVIER CHARLES clarinet IVAR GRYDELAND electric guitar CHRISTIAN WALLUMRØD prepared piano INGAR ZACH bass drum, percussion

Source: http://www.sima.org.au/Jun23WinterJazzDansLesArbresFranor/1230/n/3/0/0/