The duo of French-Lebanese alto sax player Christine Abdelnour and Swiss bass player Louis Schild offers a unique perspective of the art of the moment. Both musicians have developed their highly personal languages that draw inspiration from random, concrete noises and electroacoustic sounds, often distorted ones. Both also employ an array of extended techniques – Abdelnour uses subtle tonguing techniques, unpitched breaths, spittle-flecked growls, biting, slicing notes and breathy echoing sounds from the bell of her horn while Schild caress and scraps the bass strings with different objects, in order to explore the subtle, microtonal aspects of their instruments.

«La Louve» – the wolf – is a 34-minute piece. It is the first recorded document of Abdelnour and Schild, captured at the Librairie de la Louve in Lausanne in December 2017. Abdelnour and Schild do not attempt to develop any narrative course but to stretch and challenge their own, as well as the listener’s conception and perceptions of sound, silence, time and space. This intimate and quiet free-improvisation suggest an enigmatic, out-of-time listening experience that sharpen our senses to the many elastic nuances of every sound and its resonant-percussive qualities, as well as the microscopic, meditative aspects of the silences in between. Abdelnour and Schild sound as one, extending and enhancing each other’s minimalist sonic envelope, and together create a series of subtle but rich and dramatic events. Both even conclude with a climactic interplay, in their own terms, obviously, but an intense one.

Eyal Hareuveni

Christine Abdelnour (as), Louis Schild (b)