Duets 2001

Yuri Yaremtchuk
Duets 2001
(CD Landy Star Music/Jazzland, LS-021-01/J12)

1. Kuku
2. Ocean
3. Free Motion
4. Construction
5. Lips And Without Lips
6. Landscape
7. Dialogue
8. Birth
9. Lullaby
10. How Lenin Been In The City Of Lviv?

Yuri Yaremtchuk – soprano and tenor saxes, bass clarinet, percussion
Jean Quillivic – soprano,alto and tenor saxes
Vadim Ustimenko – bass
Christophe Rocher – bass clarinet
Natalka Polovinka – vocals
Serguei Letov – soprano and baritone saxes

Music by Yuri Yaremtchuk. Produced by Yuri Yaremtchuk. Executive producer: Michail Mitropolski. Design: Valeri Silaev and Leonid Tishkov. Photography by Valeri Silaev (Lviv 2000).

Reviews:

Magazine “Play” Issue #3, March, 2001

The genre of this album could be defined as «Õ&Friends», where Õ stands for the Lviv saxophonist Yuri Yaremtchuk, while Friends stand for the French (Bretons) Jean Quillivic and Christophe Rocher, who are also saxophonists and clarinetists, a double bass player Vadim Ustimenko (Poland), Lviv singer and actress Natalka Polovynka and finally a Moscovite Sergey Letov.

Yaremtchuk is the most important finding of a new jazz label, launched by the company Landy Star last year.

The “Duets” is Yaremtchuk’s second album with this label, and it is avant-garde of the highest European level.

That’s the way Anthony Braxton and Harry Sparnay as well as Chicago avant-gardists headed by Ken Vandermark play.

There’s nothing superfluous in this music, while it has something which can emerge only under conditions of a free joint improvisation – as it is the case with the famous Company of Derek Bailey.

The vocal monologues of Polovynka, accompanied by Yaremtchuk with his saxophone and percussions, are reminiscent of a radio show without words, after Velimir Khlebnikov, so to say.

They can be easily compared to a classical avant-garde, for instance, Visage of the composer Luciano Berio and the singer Cathy Berberian.

In addition Yaremtchuk’s “Duets” are the first Jazzland’s release, the design of which does not evoke any critical remarks on my part.

Translated by Sofia Skachko.