*2024 stock* Louis Sclavis’s 13th ECM recording finds the French clarinetist drawing inspiration from two sources – the street art of Ernest Pignon-Ernest, and the interpretive originality of a splendid new quartet. Pignon-Ernest’s works were previously the subject of Sclavis’s highly acclaimed 2002 recording Napoli’s Walls. This time Sclavis looks at a broader range of the artist’s in situ collages from Ramallah to Rome, in search of “a dynamic, a movement that will give birth to a rhythm, an emotion, a song.” In the Sclavis group, gifted bassist Sarah Murcia and expressive drummer Christophe Lavergne join pianist Benjamjn Moussay (a key collaborator on Sources and Salt and Silk Melodies) making this the first time Sclavis has explored – in characteristically individual fashion – the classic jazz format of reeds, piano, bass and drums on an ECM disc. Characters on a Wall was recorded and produced by Manfred Eicher at Studios La Buissonne in the South of France.
