An all-star avant-garde jazz ensemble of François Houle, Mark Helias, Gordon Grdina and Gerry Hemingway “find fresh new ways to express the human spirit in sound.” The music is rhythmically driven, with Grdina’s incendiary guitar playing matched by Mark Helias’ fluid bass lines and Gerry Hemingway’s propulsive drumming.
– Mark Werlin, AllAboutJazz / NativeDSD Music reviewer

In 2019 the Canadian clarinetist François Houle bean working on a new group the François Houle 4 that included Vancouver guitarist Gordon Grdina as well as two outstanding improvisers who had not previously featured in his bands. The music is rhythmically driven, with Grdina’s incendiary guitar playing matched by Mark Helias’ fluid bass lines and Gerry Hemingway’s propulsive, unconventional drumming.

Following a rigorous compositional process, Recoder was designed to highlight the musicians’ infectious virtuosity and to tackle ideas inspired by a wide range of influences, from Miroslav Vitous, Olivier Messiaen and Jimmy Giuffre to Anthony Braxton. Houle is also an accomplished and busy classical, new music and world music performer and a noted composer-performer of electroacoustic clarinet music. When he turns his focus to Avant Garde Jazz, this unusually broad range of musical experience inevitably contributes to the music’s interest.

The key for Houle lies in the “casting” and subsequent compositional process: “My goal was to create a music that would challenge the musicians, but always in full respect and understanding of their own personal affinities. In their solo contributions and improvisations on this album, I felt that the they found some truly creative and imaginative ways to interpret the material, and to support each other in weaving a coherent canvas for self-expression.”

“My writing style leans heavily on the juxtaposition of melodic threads, from which harmonies and structural elements emerge. It is in part based on my affinity for classical counterpoint, but more directly on my affection for a certain kind of jazz and improvised music – the chamber music-like interplay heard in the Jimmy Giuffre Trio’s seminal albums Fusion and Thesis, and in Steve Lacy and Gil Evans’ Paris Blues album. I am also indebted to Anthony Braxton for his teachings and writings on creative and re-structural concepts. In these recordings the harmony and rhythm are very often defined not by the archetypical roles of the instruments (bass plays a bass line, the piano plays chords, etc.) but rather by a complex layering of melodic threads from which harmonies and rhythmic aspects emerge through the interplay between the protagonists. That’s what I’m after in my own writing. The music is conceived very methodically, with pitch cells, tonal key areas that are constantly shifting, and rhythmic figures that I stretch and compress following a pre-established yet flexible compositional matrix. But rather than dictating what the mood or spirit of the music should be, I let the compositional ideas lead the way and take me down some path where a range of emotions emerge. The intellect eventually takes a backseat to what the music expresses, and I navigate that fine line between territories.”

“The duets are all free improvised, short, single takes. Mark and I spent about two hours just playing, having fun talking to each other in clarinet language! I was looking to balance the highly structured pieces with something more spontaneous and free.”

François Houle 4
François Houle, Clarinet
Gordon Grdina, Guitar
Mark Helias, Double Bass & Clarinet
Gerry Hemingway, Drums