An experienced composer, director and trumpet player, Paris-based Fabien Tehericsen has worked with such as the Arditti Quartet, ensemble Aleph, Jean-Pierre Drouet, Markus Stockhausen, Louis Sclavis, Jacques Di Donato, Robert Dick, Claude Barthelémy, Yaya Ouattara, Wang Wie Ping and many others. He directed choirs and orchestras in Romania, Poland and France, e.g. Radio France Philharmonic, the National Chamber Orchestra of Toulouse and the Choir of the National Orchestra of Lyon. He is also the motor behind several international projects in China, Ghana, Benin, Madagascar, Haïti, Kazakhstan and Russia. His works as a composer include two operas, a string quartet, "Niongonben" for eight cellos and African percussion, "Stress" for 80 African singers and jazz orchestra and many more. Convinced that there isn´t any real contradiction between written and improvised music, Tehericsen uses improvisation as a dynamic, subversive and jubilant element in all of his works. In his "Concerto Improvisé" (commissioned by the 38 Rugissants festival in Grenoble, France) the part of the soloist is fully improvised whereas the orchestral parts are all composed and written out for five 1st violins, four 2nd violins, four violas, four cellos and two bass violins. Paradoxically, the solo instrument is not defined: The soloist may be a poet, a dancer, a narrator, a player of the Afghan duduk or the African kora. The only condition the soloist must submit to is to act in symbiosis with the string orchestra so that both weave a corporate piece of music.

For this recording, Tehericsen chose the probably best-suited soloist available: Louis Sclavis, one of the most popular jazz musicians in Europe. A multi-award winner and pioneer of the so-called "folklore imaginaire", experienced in improvisational, free-form, ethnic, jazz and classical music, Louis Sclavis has been admired especially for his virtuosic clarinet playing on his own albums and with Trio de Clarinettes he co-founded in 1988. Sclavis´ hot and intelligent improvisations add up organically to the expressionistic quality of Tehericsen´s adventurous, yet very rhythmic composition. A fresh mixture of contemporary classical writing and high-class improvisational skill.