Coleman Hawkins’ solo saxophone improvisation Picasso in 1948 was a unique event; it has since become a genre, expanded in turn by such creative voices as Eric Dolphy, Anthony Braxton, and Evan Parker, and emerging innovators like Sakina Abdou and Don Malfon. Québécois alto saxophonist Yves Charuest is among the form’s masters, as evidenced here by a single, thirty-one-minute improvisation recorded in the lively acoustics of Montreal’s Saint-Édouard Church.
Charuest’s extended piece has a complex but coherent identity, touching on many of the form’s possibilities. His timbral palette can stretch from the hard-edged, metallic richness of Dolphy and the airy evanescence of Lee Konitz, sometimes deployed in succession or even in bursts in which interlocking runs alternate voices. In part, the piece is an exploration of the church’s echoing distances and surfaces. A forte blast or explosive run will still be resounding as a quiet melodic phrase emerges amid the echoes of its predecessor.
Charuest’s sonic play continuously shifts relations between space and sound in an emotionally dense journey that touches on numerous possibilities, whether as environmental testing or a journey into voice and all the interactive possibilities of musician, instrument, and environment. It’s sparked at every turn by Charuest’s innate gift for melody and timbre and the quest to expand their possibilities until saxophone voices and architectural spaces become instruments of mystery and reverie.
Out Into is a record of that movement, the saxophone itself becoming a community of voices expanding in a sacred space, a string of beautiful moments and reflections, and instants finding their unique places in the glittering continuum.
