French festival Jazzdor makes its four-day takeover debut at the Budapest Music Center

Jazzdor made its debut in Strasbourg, back in 1986, expanding to a Berlin edition in 2007. Lately, a Dresden sub-festival has been attached to the Berlin dates, and now here’s the debut of Jazzdor-Budapest, a four-day colonisation of the Opus Jazz Club. Jazzdor’s main aim is to trumpet the joys of French artists, but there is also a strong sense of collaboration with German players. The situation is even deeper at the Budapest Music Center, as in-house label BMC Records has long promoted an international scope beyond its domestic Hungarian roster. Many of those discs are by French outfits, quite a few of whom are in town now, celebrating the releases of new BMC albums.

Opus lies within the BMC, the building’s own jazz club, with ample space on its two floors, serving victuals, and attending closely to the sonics of the house. One of the best new releases is by the French violinist Clément Janinet and his group Ornette Under The Repetitive Skies, formed in 2017. Janinet digs paying homage to both of the elder Coltranes, and Ornette himself, but the violinist’s original music has a distinct individuality. The palette is completed by tenor saxophone, bass and vibraphone doubling drums, Emmanuel Scarpa moving from one to the other during the opening piece. Hugues Mayot’s tenor repeats while Janinet free-forms, then an ascending theme is repeatedly explored. The soft, honeyed, cyclic gentleness lends a unique atmosphere, faintly minimalist, to ‘Momie’ and the composition that gives this quartet its name. Janinet switches to what looks like an eight-string electric mandolin, and the luminescent repeats recall the soundscapes of Paul Motian’s Electric Bebop Band. But there’s also a bluesy Michael Brecker toughness to Mayot’s solos, as the slow fuse is lit.

Hans Lüdemann’s Trans-Europe Express Ensemble (above) is mostly French or German, with drummer Dejan Terzic hailing from old Yugoslavia and guesting accordionist Luciano Biondini being of Italian stock. The pianist leader’s music makes grand gestures, but there is also ample room for complicated gritting, mostly courtesy of the impressive twin saxophone attack of Alexandra Grimal and Silke Eberhard. High virtuosity! The veteran trombonist Yves Robert stands to the side with a softer approach, enunciating with tonal sheen, fluttering at a rapid rate. Terzic impresses throughout, with his detailed, clattery style, sounding like a free improviser as he plays agile time, always noticeable in the spread.

Lüdemann and Biondini played as a duo to open the evening, and fine though that set was, it exuded a flowery romance that was swept away by the whirling heat of the full ensemble. There was much swapping between soprano, alto and tenor, and Janinet (also a band member) made his return with a scything violin solo, followed by the leader doubling on Roland virtual-piano, for some microtonal disorientation.

The fourth night featured the prolific tenor saxophonist Sylvain Rifflet, debuting Aux Anges, yet another conceptual repertoire. This was another energised set, as the quartet combined in a varied show of dynamic shifts. Guitarist Csaba Palotai clearly affected an alternative rock vocabulary, often supplying spiky riffs for Rifflet to careen across. Percussionist Benjamin Flament lugged his weighty suitcase from the airport, favouring rows of bulb-like metal objects that looked like the old wood clackers used in trad jazz kits of yore. With a gamelan music box slant. Trumpeter Yoann Loustalot closed the imaginative circle. Soft drones welcomed a slow-sway melodic groove, with spangled guitar and peppery trumpet, then Palotai introduced a Robert Ward twangerama. Rifflet overlaid his own tenor via loop-pedals, his Indian shruti box frequently creating a soothing drone-bed. Rifflet also came on like Colin Stetson, using circular breathing on clarinet.

Back at the festival’s beginning, the French-Dutch-Swiss trio of Vincent Courtois (cello), Sanne Rambags (voice) and Julian Sartorius (drums) also impressed with their free-form song constructions. Rambags jumped from conventional verses to sudden outbursts of abstraction, then back in again, to a steady form. She tended to lead the other pair by her narrative developments, as Courtois and Sartorius soloed on the hoof. Courtois bowed as high as Gidon Kremer, sourly stinging, while Sartorius tinkered with intensity. Rambags also bowed sensitively, having brought along her own multi-pronged metal sound-maker. She sounded like a Sami singer from far-north Norway, but apparently Rambags was voicing Old Dutch. She also applied the rawness of Tanya Tagaq, from the Inuit direction. The globe can’t be unpicked, and this trio claim a new territory of their imagination, with feet also lodged in the deserts of Mongolia and the Sahara.

As each night sold out, and the audiences cheered with vigour, it’s looking like this Jazzdor-BMC joint festival will return next year, its first edition making a very strong impression of positivity.