It is not an exaggeration to call the French double bass player Joëlle Léandre one of the most important figures in the contemporary and improvised music scene. In an era when these two musical approaches almost never meet, the artist carelessly ignores the boundaries of genres and notices similarities that others could not see.

Initially, Léandre developed a career in the field of contemporary classical music but was attracted to free jazz performed by American artists who came to France in the late 1960s. She collaborated with such revolutionary composers as John Cage, Morton Feldman, Giacinto Scelsi, and Aldo Clementi. At the same time, she established contacts with such improvisers as Derek Bailey, George Lewis, Anthony Braxton, William Parker, and Marilyn Crispell. Early in her career, she met pianist Irène Schweizer and vocalist Maggie Nicols of the Feminist Improvising Group, a collective that was a great inspiration to her. Eventually, she formed a trio, Les Diaboliques, with these artists. Works for her have been written by over forty composers, which has significantly expanded the repertoire for the double bass.

During this year’s Jazztopad, the artist will present two different projects, both of which are important elements in her musical space. First, she will perform with the French accordionist Pascal Contet, with whom she has been working for twenty-eight years. The duo improvises, exploring the harmonic and sonic possibilities created by combining or contrasting their instruments. This work is the perfect embodiment of non-idiomaticity in an age when musical phrasing too often uses a predictable set of procedures. The second half of the concert will be filled with the performance of a work commissioned by Jazztopad – a new composition by Léandre, who will perform with the Polish Cello Quartet. In it, the artist focuses on sounds and rejects all theories about what they are supposed to achieve. She promises: “We will find intensity, poetry, lyricism and some emotion in this quintet!”