Mona

Album Description

A nice breath. Wide and controlled. We enter Elodie Pasquier’s Mona with catlike stealth. But it doesn’t last. The blows will rain down. The caresses too. Blood, tears, smiles, kisses and all the rest fill the 45 minutes of this packed disc. Above all, there’s this feeling that the sound from Elodie Pasquier’s clarinet is one with the sound of her own breathing. To go from the calm to the storm, gathering power and wisdom with such grace is not within everyone’s reach. We felt the potential in her past feats of arms. Notably with orTie, in duet with the late Grégoire Gensse. But now, for this recording bearing only her name, her aura spreads. Elodie Pasquier isn’t really alone, because she’s surrounded by four big bodyguards: the impressive Icelandic guitarist Hilmar Jensson, the Belgian drummer Teun Verbruggen, the trumpet player Fred Roudet and the saxophonist Romain Dugelay. It’s a quintet of soul adventurers, of timber chasers that alternate between free sequences and stripped-down meditations without highlighting the transitions. No, there’s no decompression chamber in this music, only a breath palette. She’s astonishing. © MZ/Qobuz