Urs Leimgruber, Marilyn Crispell, Joëlle Léandre, Fritz Hauser

Victo 40th Anniversary Super Sale. Though the four had never played together as a quartet, they had played with each other in other combinations, so each came with a familiarity of improvisational strategies and a willingness to push the music. What each of these musicians share is a balance of phenomenal control of their instrument and a sharp, open approach to collective improvisation. Their set of eight spacious improvisations grew from the tiniest of details and gestures, formed from quiet lines and overtones. The four voices slowly gathered force as their improvisations flowered into heated, fiery, four-way exchanges with charging momentum, which they broke and fractured with open, angular phrases. The set included various pairings of duets and trios with standouts including a duet between Crispell and Hauser with angular insistent phrases from piano against percussive pinpoint torrents and one by Crispell and Léandre expanding on dark free melodicism. The set built in waves of dynamism and tension, ending with a beautiful extended free melody, picked up by tenor, piano and bass, over Hauser's hushed cymbals.

Michael Rosenstein, Cadence

The Victo performance was the first for the group. The music had a deliberateness about it, an air of steady concentration that gave its own distinctive character, improvisation of tremendous precision!

Stuart Broomer, Coda