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FABRICE ALLEMAN Udiverse
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CYPRES CYP06 10 [61:22]
Unity in diversity
Between You and Me
Tema de Maela
Beauty Where It Is
Porgy and Bess: Summertime
What's Love?
Bridges
J-J
Dawn and Twilight
Fabrice Alleman (soprano saxophone): Vincent Bruyninckx (piano): Sam Gerstmans (double bass): "Minimo" Garay (drums):Fred Jacquemin (drums): Guests – Philip Catherine (electric guitar: What’s Love?): Fred Favarel (guitars: Tema de Maela, Summertime, Bridges, Dawn and Twilight): Liege Chamber Orchestra: Ensemble Quartz
Recorded July 2016-Febraury 2017, Dada Studios, Brussels
Since changing direction from his Classical training, the Belgian soprano saxophonist Fabrice Alleman has enjoyed European success and played with some top-flight players, such as Terrence Blanchard and Kenny Werner. With this disc, backed by the Chamber Orchestra of Liège and Ensemble Quartz, the former offering string cushion, the latter wind ballast, he enters what some might still term Third Stream territory.
Most of the tunes are by Alleman himself or Michel Herr andSummertime is the only standard. Alleman’s Unity in Diversity offers one of the repeating components of the disc, a romantic, rather filmic string wash with the very fluent and flowing soprano riding over it, and surmounting the wind playing too. This textured backing would not be out of place in a Hollywood-scored film from the 40s though the arrangement of Between you and me, another original from the leader, does allow the trio of pianist Vincent Bruyninckx, bassist Sam Gerstmans and drummer Fred Jacquemin to emerge neatly. But there can be something a touch bland about the arrangements and indeed the whole approach; Lalo Zanelli’s Tema de Maela is a case in point – perfectly pleasant, with a pain-free soprano line of elegance but little passion (no Coltrane death rattle, or even Bechet’s soaring vibrato). There’s a reflective ballad from Herr called Beauty where it is but the vaguely Latino Summertime, complete with adept guitar solo, is decidedly jaunty.
Guest star Philip Catherine plays on Alleman’s What’s love? and he brings some much needed blues feeling to the music-making, broadening the stylistic remit wider than is to be found anywhere else in the album. Alleman responds with quiet and lyrical playing. There’s a slightly Eastern/Moroccan start to Bridges though the allusions are never properly developed, seemingly more tangential than anything. The final, rather confusingly laid out track is J-J, Dawn and Twilight and J-J once again, where there’s a slightly rockier vibe all round, and a coiling soprano solo adds something a little different to the mix.
If you enjoy filmic Third Stream, this may well have something for you. There’s no doubting Alleman is an elegant and eloquent stylist. I just found too much of his latest disc bloodless.
Jonathan Woolf