Marjolaine Charbin, Eddie Prévost

The Cry of a Dove Announcing Rain documents two afternoon concerts at Cafe OTO in London by the French pianist Marjolaine Charbin and Eddie Prévost on percussion. The first took place on 23 October 2022 and runs 30 minutes, the second on 8 January 2023 and runs 47. The duo grew out of the July 2022 series for Prévost's 80th birthday, where Charbin played in the quartet heard on The Art of Noticing.

Charbin had been releasing records in France for about a decade. David Grundy, reviewing the July quartet, described her approaching the piano from the inside, with a small kit of portable preparations such as horsehair and little silver globes. Here, according to Stuart Broomer, her range runs from prepared piano to long series of clusters in regular rhythm. Prévost's percussion means a bass drum laid flat on the floor as a resonator for small objects, plus cymbals and other things that are bowed rather than struck. Bowed and scraped metal and string techniques inside the piano produce long, wailing tones, the cries of the title. At one point a continuous bass rumble could come from either the drum or the piano, and the music never quite gives away its source. Broomer heard the record as a remarkably empathetic partnership and Charbin as a pianist likely to become a significant presence in improvised music (The Free Jazz Collective, 2024).

Released by Matchless Recordings in 2023 on CD (MRCD 113), with notes by Emmanuelle Waeckerlé and by Charbin.