Matthieu Bordenave

La traversée is the first album as leader on ECM by the French tenor saxophonist Matthieu Bordenave, a trio session with piano and double bass that sits between contemporary chamber music and jazz. Its point of departure is the Jimmy Giuffre 3 with Paul Bley and Steve Swallow, a group that in Bordenave's words "opened new territory that remains relevant for improvisers today." The music is quiet and open, and the written lines and the improvised ones are often hard to tell apart.

Bordenave plays here with the German pianist Florian Weber and the Swiss bassist Patrice Moret. Weber already had his own ECM records, among them the quartet album Lucent Waters, and Moret had recorded for the label in several other groups. Saxophonist and pianist had first worked together about five years earlier, in a Munich programme built on the songs of Edith Piaf. Bordenave's own first ECM appearance had been in Shinya Fukumori's trio, on For 2 Akis in 2018. Before concentrating on tenor he spent years playing classical music on alto saxophone, and he believes this still shapes his register and phrasing. The album was recorded in October 2019 at Studios La Buissonne in Pernes-les-Fontaines, with Gérard de Haro as engineer and Manfred Eicher as producer.

All nine pieces are by Bordenave, and their titles come from lines and images in the poetry of René Char. The recurring River refers to the Sorgue, which runs through Pernes-les-Fontaines. It opens the album as a duet for saxophone and piano and closes it in trio form. Archipel brings in the bass, and on Ventoux Moret takes a long solo passage before the piano returns. The short Incendie blanc is built around Weber's delicate piano, with the saxophone leaving wide spaces around each phrase.

Reviewers heard the Giuffre lineage, and also a stronger pull towards composed music. In All About Jazz, Friedrich Kunzmann wrote that Bordenave's influences "seem to cut deeper into the repertoire of modern classical music", moving further from swing while keeping its improvising candour. Mike Gates of UK Vibe found that the record asks for patience, adding that "the more one listens, the more compelling and beguiling it undoubtedly becomes." For Peter Bacon in London Jazz News, writing in October 2020, the three musicians play to their similarities.

This is the CD edition, ECM 2683, first released on 25 September 2020.