Oliver Kuhn Wissen

French saxophonist Émile Parisien, instigator of some of the most musical, formidably skilful yet wackily diverting adventures in recent European jazz, makes a rare UK visit in a duo at November’s London jazz festival, but this exuberant album rams home the full Parisien experience, with a new quintet, regular accordion partner Vincent Peirani, and two revered European elder statesmen in German pianist Joachim Kühn and French bass clarinet original Michel Portal. From the opening vibrato-trembling soprano sax Préambule (Parisien can be a spiky avantist, but he’s a devoted Sidney Bechet admirer, too), through the hard-swinging Poulp – which sounds like the work of a 21st-century Hot Club band with Ornette Coleman leanings – through the contemporary-noir doom-walk of Brainmachine or the accordion-throbbing Umckaloabo, Parisien leads an exhilarating genre-hop bubbling with captivating remakes of US and European jazz traditions. And Kühn, a majestic soloist inside or outside conventional harmony, sounds as if he’s been an instantly responsive communicator with this lineup – and particularly the leader – for years.

"An intelligent, completely unique mix of sheer power and playfulness that really shakes things up“ Jazzpodium

This is a delightful record that features the woody clarinet of Rolf Kuhn in a variety of amicable settings. There’s an ethereal group with Dave Liebman's soprano sax and Chuck Loeb's guitar, raucous collaborations with Randy Brecker's groups, clarinet pairings with Buddy DeFranco and Eddie Daniels on boppish runs and ballads, the angular abstraction of a duet with Albert Manglesdorf, and the closer, a sweet harmolodic dance with Ornette Coleman.