Xavier Charles / Jacques Di Donato - Ilex [Protagoniste]

A student-teacher affair this album is. Having worked together for long now the story goes that Xavier Charles once was a student of clarinet teacher Jacques Di Donato back in 1990, a relationship that lead to a highly successful and long lasting collaboration and now to the duo's most recent album on Protagoniste in which the musicians further explore the possibilities of their instrument, this time accompanied by additional sound sources such as lawn mower and helicopter. Yes, lawn mower and helicopter! Together the duo caters a selection of fourteen improvisations, all of them recorded in 2014 and defo providing a homogenic body of work for all fans of a well experimental approach towards wind instruments with "Wisteria" sticking out most for its playful, yet accessible and slightly even tongue-in-cheek nature whereas "Cerisier" defines longing, yearning melancholia to perfection within 160 seconds of runtime only to name two of our favorite tunes from this album as special picks. A specialists release for sure, but an interesting one anyway.

Album artwork on Instagram!