Ne pas croire qu'il n'y a qu'improvisations ici: quatre compositions (trois de John Tchicai, une de Pierre Dorge) se nichent dans ce concert organisé par Niklaus Troxler le 30 août 1980 au festival de Willisau. Première rencontre (ultime?) avec pour axe le collectif. Pas de successions de solos (même si solos il y a) mais une écoute et une entraide magnifiques. Il y a l'alto serpentin de John Tchicai, souvent convulsif, souvent allumé. Et il y a son chant incantatoire. Un chant venu du fond des âges, du tréfonds de l'âme. Il y a la trompette de Don Cherry, cette trompette pénétrante, concrète, aimante, celle qui aime à encourager la mélodie. Il y a le piano d'Irène Schweizer: ce piano qui scrute, distribue et brise les carcans. Il y a l'archet robuste de Léon Francioli. Il y a sa contrebasse ronde, ouverte à tous les élans. Il y a la batterie de Pierre Favre. Beaucoup découvriront ici sa puissance, sa franche détermination.

Et il y a la musique du free jazz bien sûr mais pas que cela. Il y aura des mélodies en droite ligne d'Afrique du Sud, il y aura des leitmotivs, des riffs entêtants, des joutes, de l'humour. Et jamais une baisse de ton, jamais de doute(s). C'est une musique qui transperce la nuit, résiste au millésime. Musique enflammée donc.

Liberated from the archives, this 1980 live set documents Irène Schweizer's only collaboration with Don Cherry, as part of a quintet with saxophonist John Tchicai, bassist Léon Francioli and drummer Pierre Favre. The first track starts on a cold open, as the engineer raises the fader on what is already a simmering concert. As Cherry and Tchicai make short, declarative statements, Schweizer's piano marches forward in tight agitated clusters, like the soundtrack to some Russian futurist hymn to technology. Under all this comes a wrenching cyborg croak, like Captain Beefheart puking into a megaphone. This is soon revealed to be Francioli, bowing with remarkable agility, despite the pressure he's applying to the strings.

Things get a little funkier as the quintet fall behind the kind of oddly swinging theme you'd associate with Cherry's Where Is Brooklyn?, with Schweizer getting as close to stride as a European free jazzer can get. Pierre Favre's hyperactive ride cymbals set a Francioli solo feature of fleet runs, mid-range gulps and cheekily pinched strings, before Tchicai leaps back in with a hard, raspy squall. Schweizer's solo feature is quite brilliant, as she goes from short crab-like moves to parabolic arcs across the keyboard, before settling into a European lyric mode that slots beautifully behind Cherry's trumpet.

The lengthy second cut begins in a more fragmentary fashion, with Tchicai blabberinç theatrically between hearty blasts of alto. Francioli quotes the secondary melody of "Three Blind Mice", a curiously goofy gambit that reaps dividends when the whole group reprise the figure later on. If this all sounds a bit too like the Two Ronnies sketch where Cleo Laine and Johnny Dankworth scat the nursery rhyme, fear not: it's pulled off with winning chutzpah and doesn't sound remotely wacky. This group has a great knack of laying syncopation under clockwork figures and jerky militaristic struts. In one particularly strong passage, the sax and piano double up on a Philip Glass-like ostinato that gradually shakes itself loose into a funky Caledonian canter, like Brigadoon scored by Charles Mingus. For the bulk of the third track, the quintet rides a hip "Linus And Lucy" riff, before Francioli's arco bass introduces a lyrical theme by Danish composer Pierre Dørge that Tchicai brings to full flower. Sounding as fresh as the day it was recorded, Musical Monsters is a fantastic piece of European free jazz.