Stories woven about the observation of living creatures form the basis for the series Bestiarie by French saxophonist Matthieu Donarier, and the first album in it, Explorations. In this release by BMC Records, shining exponents of European jazz join forces, pooling their skills and personal experiences, to give listeners a thought-provoking and also liberating experience. One of the greatest strengths of this album is that it gives space to instinctive music-making and soaring imagination: Bestiaire draws horizons, moves mountains and ignites illuminations, it blows mists and creates a bustling animal world.

The theme of Explorations is none other than a confrontation with the vast external world and the feeling of solitude that sometimes captivates us in this huge planet full of wonderful beings and formations, which care not a jot whether they are observed. This recording is part of Matthieu Donarier’s long-brewing project Bestiaire, and builds on the cooperation between four musicians: Donarier on the saxophone and clarinet, Karsten Hochapfel on the cello, Eve Risser on the piano, and Toma Gouband on the drumkit. The album is both a starting point and the closure of a creative period, because various versions of Bestiaire have been played at concerts, including on the platform of the Opus Jazz Club, and Explorations is the first in a series of CDs based on it.

The musical material is deliberately varied, and enables many combinations of instruments. Donarier’s aim is to have many duos, trios, and quartets play the repertoire, in their own way. The combination of precomposed and improvisatory elements enables the performers to alter the musical material and interact with one another. Donarier is not the first to set out on this path, but the musicians of Bestiaire do not seek novelty at all costs: they choose musical devices that can maintain the process of narration the most efficiently, and move the listener. The simplest, apparently familiar phenomena are rendered splendid often precisely because they are shared, and accessible to everyone.

The musicians’ background is integrally linked to the world of Explorations, or vice versa, their individual background has defined the peculiar world of this CD. The multi-talented Matthieu Donarier, who instigated the project Bestiaire, is a composer and actor, a saxophonist and clarinettist, all in one. He regularly plays with Gábor Gadó, Manu Codjia, Sébastien Boisseau, Stéphane Kerecki, Tony Malaby, and has shared the stage with Dave Liebman, Marc Ducret, Pat Metheny, and Chris Potter. Eve Risser has already shown her dreamy style inspired by natural phenomena on several solo albums, and also with Benjamin Duboc and Edward Perraud in their trio, and in the formations Red and the White Desert Orchestra. Karsten Hochapfel has an impressionist yet precise narrative style, and has played alongside Sylvaine Hélery in the trio [Uns], and also performs in concerts with Carolyn Carlson and Naïssam Jalal’s Rhythms Of Resistance. In the lineup Archetypal Syndicate, alongside Paul Wacrenier and Sven Clerx, he experimented with sounds and acoustic nuances traces of which can also be heard in Bestiaire. Toma Gouband’s fellow musicians have included people such as Evan Parker, Benoit Delbecq, Antonin-Tri Hoang, and Eve Risser (as a member of the Ensemble ensemble).