Franck Vigroux
Broken Circles Live
(Ars Nova)

Matthew Bourne - Fender Rhodes, tape echo
Marc Ducret - electric guitar
Geraldine Keller - soprano
Franck Vigroux - electronics
Ars Nova Ensemble (Philippe Nahon, conductor)

French composer and musician Franck Vigroux operates within a radical niche genre that blurs the distinctions between electronica, improvisation, and occasional, as on this disc, contemporary composition. “Broken Circles Live” documents the realization of his titular composition for chamber ensemble and soprano, in a live performance accompanied by improvising musicians and the composer’s live electronics.

The participation in any project of either Matthew Bourne or Marc Ducret is invariably a sign that there’s something interesting afoot; the presence of both makes “Broken Circles” immediately attractive. It’s an unclassifiable piece of work, but in general terms it’s an exercise in genre-busting contemporary orchestration. Whereas even a notionally radical ensemble such as Zeitkratzer, for instance, draw inspiration from contemporary non-classical avant-garde musics as grist for the chamber ensemble repertory, with “Broken Circles” Vigroux works a pretty aggressive mash-up of improv, opera and electronics into something genuinely unclassifiable, but eminently listenable, coherent and pretty damn exciting to boot. It’s a highly individuated work, brought to vivid life by a stunningly successful mating of improvisational impulses and Vigroux’s obvious compositional rigour.

Since the great French guitarist Marc Ducret disdains the recording studio it’s always great to hear him on a new recording, and his electric instrument is a perfect foil for the astringency of the Ars Novas’ clarinet, strings, and operatic soprano. The ensemble play with plenty of subtlety, so there’s no grating contrast between the composed and improvised. Pianist Michael Maurer deserves a special mention, as his piano has a vivid role to play, particularly in the first movement, where he plays beautifully against Ducret’s astringent lines in establishing the early mood and direction of the piece. The other ensemble members, on clarinet, trumpet, violin, viola, cello, and percussion, are more strictly trammelled, so they must show their individuality by the precision of their expressive and tonal choices.

“Broken Circles” is dedicated to the pianist Matthew Bourne, who collaborated with Vigroux on the 2008 duo album “Call Me Madam”. Here, as on that earlier date, it’s often (though by no means always) hard to discern Bourne’s Rhodes from Vigroux’s electronics. Where “Call Me Madam” was an unruly high-octane exercise in exuberance here they do a subtle, sensitive job of integration with the ensemble. Although it’s easy enough to focus on individual contributions - Bourne on the Rhodes follows Maurer on that first piece with particular delicacy - “Broken Circles” impresses most in its unity.

Special mention must be made, however, of the bravura performance by the French soprano Geraldine Keller. Keller may be familiar to some (though not, I admit, myself) from Thomas Agergaard’s JAZZPAR 2002 Octet. Her own website biography describes her as having “explored the fields of improvisational music in connection with theatre, dance and poetry”, and she certainly brings the full range of her experience to bear during “Broken Circles”, operating in all registers from the hushed narrative that runs throughout the piece to a dramatically operatic vocalese.

The live nature of the recording is made explicit at the outset by the sounds of the ensemble taking the stage. At the end of the disc, however, after a few minutes of silence, there is a passage of Vigroux’s solo, mechanical beats-driven electronica. It doesn’t sound like an encore; rather I suppose it’s intended as a bonus track. In any case it doesn’t add much, and arguably it spoils the lingering appreciation of the main event. It’s not a particularly strong track, and makes a poor advert for Vigroux’s solo work. I’m not sure what it’s doing there.

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