In 2010 Paris-based pianist Benoît Delbecq received the ultimate accolade from the French recording world, the Grand Prix Internationale du Disque in jazz, for his simultaneous Songlines releases The Sixth Jump (trio) and Circles and Calligrams (solo piano). He soon followed that up with Because She Hoped, a duo recording with Vancouver-based clarinetist François Houle, their third (following Nancali, 1997, and Dice Thrown, 2002). Their work together has its own very particular synergy.

Houle and Delbecq have both pioneered extended techniques on their instruments. Delbecq is known for his extensive use of piano preparations, developing a style inspired equally by Cage and Ligeti, African pygmy polyphony, and Steve Coleman, Steve Lacy and other jazz greats. His process transforms the piano’s natural resources into an evolving weave of textures and colours, improvised rhythmic-melodic ‘fabrics’ combining regular notes and prepared pitch-timbres. Houle studied with Evan Parker, adapting the saxophonist’s innovations to the clarinet and integrating classical technique with blue notes and quarter tones, circular breathing, sound effects, playing without a mouthpiece, etc.

So with all this expressive fire-power at their disposal it’s striking how serene yet playful much of the music feels. As François puts it: “Duo playing is about the most intimate way to communicate with another musician. I have grown to have a deeper understanding of Benoît’s language and sound world, which always provides me with clues as to how to execute ideas in different ways. How this plays out is that we don’t try to formulate premeditated structures, or to ever adopt a traditional call and response, solo/accompaniment thing, except for the Ellington and Lacy pieces, which seemed to require a certain structural rigor. Our improvisations are much more akin to embroidery, painstakingly paying attention to the kind of fabric we want to create, working symbiotically to achieve that by complementing each other. Of course solos emerge, but that is in consideration of what each individual has to state in the context of the performance. Most of Benoît’s music has an intrinsic poetic quality which manifests itself in liquid melodic lines. I respond to that very deeply, in some ways even more than to the rhythmic aspects of his music. Almost all my compositions on this recording are all about melody.”

Benoît adds: “I find the musical flow very special on this recording, it is calm and somehow feverish all together….I think things move so fast inside when we play that it’s complex to describe what’s going on. I remember something Dave Holland told me, back at the Banff Jazz workshop, 1987: ‘Playing needs to be unconscious and accurate while accurate listening has to be fully conscious.’ I think this sentence totally applies to our duo. There is something highly conscious in the instant auto-analysis of the playing, and something definitely unconscious in the freedom we use.”

Even the sound is rather special thanks to the work of Delbecq’s collaborators, engineer Etienne Bultingaire and cinema sound designer Nicolas Becker, who contributed for the mix a set of impulse responses he’d created in the huge greenhouse of a French chateau. Benoît explains: “Using such an IR means that you’re placing the duo virtually inside this greenhouse, just as if we had played in it; it simulates ambient mics catching the resonances of that space. I like the feeling of constructing an imaginary ideal venue.” Beyond such questions of expressive means however there is a contemplative core to this music, something mysterious and enigmatic, that continues to fascinate.

Benoît Delbecq, Piano
François Houle, Clarinet