Yves Robert, Vincent Courtois, Cyril Atef

In Touch is the first album Yves Robert made as a leader for ECM, a trio record for trombone, cello and drums with Vincent Courtois and Cyril Atef. Its subtitle, 48' de tendresse, names the programme: eight pieces of slow, lyrical chamber jazz built on dialogue and on the grain of sound. Robert's trombone had by then been one of the defining voices of the new French jazz for two decades, and the album is the clearest picture of him as a composer.

Before this record Robert had appeared on ECM twice, with Heiner Goebbels on Ou bien le débarquement désastreux (1994) and with Louis Sclavis on Les Violences de Rameau (1996). The trio had played together since 1999 and toured regularly under the project name La tendresse. Courtois sometimes takes the role of a bassist, but more often acts as a second melodic voice beside the trombone, while Atef works the kit with brushes, sticks and small objects. The session was recorded in March 2001 at Piccolo Studio in Paris and mixed at Studio Ferber by Jeff Ginouvès with Robert and Manfred Eicher, who produced. Robert wrote seven of the eight pieces, and Let's Lay Down is by Atef.

The title piece frames the record, a theme of under a minute that returns twice in short variations. At the centre is La tendresse, nearly seventeen minutes long, where trombone and cello lines intertwine over Atef's understated punctuation. Robert moves through it from slow, mournful phrases to quick staccato without losing the warmth of his tone. L'air d'y toucher rests on a firmer groove and more colourful drumming, and Atef's own Let's Lay Down is the most outgoing track. Throughout, Courtois uses pizzicato, microtonal inflections and rough intonation as much as conventional bowing.

In France the album received a Choc de l'année 2002 from Jazzman and a Disque d'émoi from Jazz Magazine. In Jazzwise, Keith Shadwick praised Robert's "glorious, brassy tone with the type of human warmth that has long been the trombone's special gift to jazz". John Eyles, writing for BBC Online, heard "a chamber jazz group of the highest order" and found that the seventeen minutes of La Tendresse fly by.

This is the CD edition, ECM 1787, first released in November 2002.