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Rare London performance for seminal French pianist François Tusques. Born in 1938 in Paris, Tusques was among the first to bring together French musicians to explore a new musical language in the 1960’s. He also formed connections with all the significant American avant garde players who came to Paris at that time: Don Cherry, Sunny Murray, Alan Silva. A forerunner of world music, he led the Intercommunal Free Dance Music Orchestra through the 1990s, crossing paths with free jazz, Britanny folklore and African percussion. Recent years featured collaborations with William Parker, Mats Gustafson, Louis Sclavis and Sonny Simmons.
"It is somewhat ironic that, as much as European jazz and free improvisation are nestled squarely within the canon of contemporary music—one has to look only at the worldwide recognition of figures like Germany's Peter Brötzmann, England's Evan Parker, or Holland's Misha Mengelberg and their respective integral scenes—the country with the closest ties to vanguard American jazz in the '60s has been almost wholly left out of the picture. France has produced several world-renowned improvisers (for example, clarinetists Michel Portal and Louis Sclavis are among the instrument's greatest proponents), but the architects of France's 'new thing' have been summarily left by the wayside over the course of the music's history. Pianist and composer François Tusques, while almost unknown outside his native France, is certainly among the rare few in European jazz, not only as a crucial figure in the development of the music in his sector of the continent, but so crucial that he was able to record the first true French free jazz record (Free Jazz, reissued by In Situ)—a claim which, Stateside, is not even Ornette Coleman's." - Clifford Allen, All About Jazz
