Dazzlingly angular, decidedly adventurous performances by French jazz ensemble Kartet, recorded 25 years after their founding. The quartet of Guillaume Orti, Benôit Delbecq, Hubert Dupont and Stéphane Galland bring intriguing compositions and skillful interaction to these sessions. This notable album captures the group’s unique sound in sharp-focused 24/88 resolution, and was awarded Jazz Magazine’s highest honor, a 2014 CHOC.

Celebrating its 25th anniversary with Grand Laps, Kartet continued to expand on its unique sound and approach, winning a coveted Choc 2014 from Jazz Magazine. French critic Stéphane Ollivier described their music as “in continuous metamorphosis as it pivots around the four players, and results in many simultaneous and complementary points of view on the same reality…a music which reconciles intellect and intuition as it combines a quasi-mathematical rigor with a sensitivity, an instrumental originality, and an attention to detail forged by the supreme exercise of total improvisation.” Popmatters’ Will Layman praised their previous release The Bay Window thus: “Kartet makes a deliberate and beautiful brand of inside-out jazz…decidedly unconventional yet not harsh or taxing on the ear…Kartet flows seamlessly in and out of improvisations, and its arranged material shows harmonic daring and imagination.”

Bassist Hubert Dupont explains how the group develops new pieces: “The improvisations are very connected to the written material, which is quite dense most of the time, with rhythmic games, melodic rules, colors, etc….We enjoy playgrounds, frames, in order to spontaneously organize together tension/resolution movements, suspended colours, illusions….” Saxophonist Guillaume Orti adds: “[Our compositions] work with strict and limited harmonic-melodic material, strongly connected with the rhythmic material. But the shapes we can give to our melodic and rhythmic wanderings are unlimited.” Benoît Delbecq expands on his own process: “For myself, any new rhythmic material is worth sitting down at the piano with, or tapping or juggling with, to enter into a specific knowledge of it. Imagination is like a muscle, and if you give it new ideas it can lead you to unexpected territories, which is what I’m looking for, because that’s when the body ends up speaking first, the flow being given by the trained mind, ready to react like a spring.”

And the effect on younger musicians, and on the audience? “Usually, the people who are passionate about Kartet also dig musicians like Steve Coleman, Steve Lehman, Andy Milne, Ralph Alessi, Tyshawn Sorey, Craig Taborn, Tim Berne…to name a few greats who are constantly searching for newer shapes, a mixture of control and freedom….Our music is not docile, it doesn’t answer a market demand or anything, it is music that’s sincere in its primary direction: find a collective sound, develop our own way to play and build music in a collective way, bring the listener into a state of dream, of trance…there is some magic going on.”

Guillaume Orti- alto, C-melody and F mezzo-soprano saxophones
Benoît Delbecq- piano
Hubert Dupont- bass
Stéphane Galland- drums