Words by Kris Kropff
Written over a decade and recorded by the quintet Barbastelle, Vestige Étésien is part modern jazz album, part traditional 8-movement chamber work. Those parts overlap, interact, and intertwine in what Barbastelle bassist and composer Jordi Cassagne calls an ode to transformation. In this case, the ode is to a transformation that is part structure and part freedom, part stillness and part change, those parts creating a logbook of sound—again, a Cassagne descriptor—and a thought-provoking listen.
Off Shelf: I’m delighted to learn more about this album—really albums, since there is a visual album as well as the traditional audio one—starting with the title.
Jordi Cassagne: The two words that make up the title of the album “Vestige Étésien” are not connected by any grammatical logic. Rather, the juxtaposition of these two common nouns is intended to generate a particular sensation and leave the listener free to interpret.
The name of the album came to me when I was editing the film paired with the album. There are several elements in the images that resonate with the title, the wind itself, the fact that the images were shot in Crete and the presence of different kinds of remains, geological and human, like ruins, or the wreck of the boat in the last part of the film.
The etesian (étésien) is a wind that blows from the north in the Mediterranean, it comes from the ancient Greek ἔτος (year), and its etymology therefore indicates that it is a wind that returns every year. I like the fact that this word contains both the ideas of breath and return. The vestige evokes a trace of the past, the memory of something that has disappeared, and reinforces the temporal dimension already conveyed by “étésien”.
The combination of the two words also suggests the idea of erosion by time and the elements. It echoes the fact that some of the compositions are quite old and that the back-and-forth between past and present was central to the writing process. I believe that compositions are never set in stone; on the contrary, I often continue to rework and modify them. They are therefore “vestiges” in constant mutation.
OS: What led you to form Barbastelle?
JC: Ever since I studied in The Hague, I’ve enjoyed composing in a polyphonic style, which has led me to form large ensembles such as sextet, septet, or octet. When I moved to Brussels, I carried on a bit, but finding concerts was quite a struggle and such projects require so much work and rehearsal time that it was hard to keep them alive.
In 2019, I decided to set up a quartet called Nouroog and the idea was to play more straight-forward music with a lot of improvisation. This band was with Samuel Ber on drums and Sylvain Debaisieux and Sam Comerford on saxophones. The players and name evolved over the next four years until 2023, when I wanted to extend the quartet to a quintet, in order to have a kind of symmetry between the two winds and the two strings, and to reconnect with a more chamber jazz style. The result is the current lineup of Barbastelle: Yann Lecollaire (clarinet), Hanne De Backer (bass clarinet, baritone saxophone), Adèle Viret (cello), Samuel Ber (drums), and myself (double bass).
From the very first rehearsal, I was enthralled by the sounds of the ensemble and by this combination of musicians and human beings, and I felt that there was a vast range of possibilities. This is just the beginning of the exploration I intend to continue with this band. Each musician in the project has a very powerful vision of music; both in improvisation and composition, and this of course played an important role in the development of the final music, particularly in the improvised parts.
OS: Yes! The last movement of each Diptych is freely improvised. Talk a little about that process. Did you provide a basic structure to the group in advance? Was the structure developed collectively?
JC: Before going into the studio, I already had the idea of recording at least one free improvisation to counterbalance the amount of written music. We recorded the album over two days, and when we arrived in the studio on the morning of the second day, I simply suggested that the band improvise, with the aim of connecting with each other in a more organic way. We only recorded these two improvisations and after listening to them, I decided to integrate them both into the album.
OS: At what point in the process did you decide there would be a visual album as well?
JC: We recorded in February 2024. Six months prior, in August of 2023, I had filmed some video sequences in Crete, and I edited the Nef music video using these images. Then little by little, after mixing the album and choosing the order of the tracks on the record, I felt that the music had a color and a certain unity that could make sense with images. From the outset, I knew that I didn’t want the images to be too narrative, but rather to take a more abstract direction, so that the link between the music and the images wouldn’t be unbalanced. I also wanted to give priority to sequence shots, and choose a filming location and a time of day for each musical episode on the record. In August 2024, I was in Crete again, so I filmed some new sequences. However, at that stage I still didn’t know exactly which song would go with which sequence.
In the autumn of 2024, I did the editing and the final structure took shape. For Asphodèles and Limon d’Éclat, I chose footage of a torrent below in a gorge shaded by trees. For Satori and Rive de Basalte, I chose footage shot before sunset on a beach with a cave. For Nef, I already had the sequence shot the previous year of a car journey along a mountain road. For Écorces, it’s a sort of mosaic with images of ruins, landscapes and an ending shot at night in a village. This nocturnal ending and the fact that Limon d’Éclat uses scenes from the same location as the first sequence gave the film its diptych structure.
The second part, then, ends with Parhélie and Écueil, which were shot in the same place. I chose a sequence shot taken a morning just after sunrise. I started filming the boats and wrecks in the harbor, and it’s these images that accompany Parhélie. Then, I walked up to the heights of the village, from where I was able to film the scenes we see in Écueil, including the sun emerging from behind the mountains at the end.
OS: You cited Bartók as an influence, who’s a favorite of mine too. Would you share a few examples of his influence?
JC: Bartók is one of the composers I’ve probably listened to the most. From a compositional point of view, I was very influenced by the aesthetics of his music, and by a number of ideas linked to compositional techniques. The works whose direct influence can be heard in “Vestige Étésien” are certainly “Music for strings, percussion and celesta”, the “Concerto for Orchestra,” and the string quartets.
For example, in the introduction part of “Limon d’Éclat”, the melodic line is not harmonised tonally but by means of a homorhythmic counterpoint that follows the melodic curve in a parallel manner to an interval of major 9th, then 5th. This kind of polyphonic effect can be heard in the 2nd movement of the “Concerto for Orchestra”, for example. Still in “Limon d’Éclat”, the more contrapuntal part, which is a 3- voice canon, just after the first theme written to a gnawa-inspired rhythm, may also bring to mind certain polyphonic textures to be found in Bartók’s music.
The first part of “Rive de Basalte” is a kind of chorale based on a symmetrical scale, as found throughout Bartok’s work. The scale I used in “Rive de Basalte” was listed by Messiaen as Mode number 3. To be more precise, this mode has normally 9-notes, but in “Rive de Basalte”, I decided to remove the 8th note from the scale, in order to generate a more specific color with an augmented second interval.
OS: Thank you for that! It was a fascinating look into your compositional
influences. Is there anything you can share, more broadly, about your compositional process?
JC: In general, what gives me the impetus before composing a new piece is to try to make real and audible a sound texture that takes shape in an imaginary way. Often, these mental representations are born when something inspires me: a film, a painting, a novel, or some music.