Didier Petit - NOHC on the Road

Didier Petit
NOHC on the Road
Leo Lab 065

NOHC (Nitrogen, Oxygen, Hydrogen, Carbon) is a “chamber jazz” group consisting of leader Didier Petit on cello, Daunik Lazro on alto and baritone saxes, Denis Colin on bass clarinet, and Michael Nick on violin. This fine disk consists of ten pieces (ranging from just over one minute to 13 minutes) recorded in six locations in France (three in March of 1999, three in October of that year). The ten compositions were then organized into three suites (of three, four and three pieces). The composition credits for these works are all given to “Didier Petit & NOHC”, but there seems to be a bit too much in the way of “architecture” in many of these tunes for all of them to have been entirely improvised by the ensemble. The playing is so good, and the interplay so deft, however, that it is difficult to tell where the improvisation stops and the pre-written material begins. As I’ve often said, I consider this perhaps the sine qua non of excellence in contemporary jazz writing and group improvisation. The second piece of the first suite, “Russian-Techno (Avignon)”, begins like a slightly sour cousin to Prokofiev’s first string quartet, with steady staccato quarter-note chords played piano by violin and bass clarinet. The marriage of these two continues (through ups, downs and final psychosis) for the duration of this incredible three-minute piece. After a couple of bars of this preparatory chordal march, Didier’s cello springs forth with a sprightly, Soviet-style melody over the regular percolations, now at mp, of bass clarinet and double-stopped violin. It could still be the beginning of a 1930s Prokofiev or Shostakovich scherzo, but only for about 45 more seconds. Just as Didier’s has begun to settle into his Dnieper theme, the background duo enters the first of a bundle of metrical modulations, and Lazro’s alto begins splattering notes against every wall. At this turn of events, Didier gives up his “Mr. Nice Comrade” facade and takes up his bow, first to whack his cello irregularly and then to pour out some clamorous octaves. Our background couple continues to get faster then slower, louder then softer, always in tandem. When they reach their slowest tempo at about the two-minute mark, Didier and Lazro begin a sorrowful (though perhaps nightmarish) chorale, with Didier now singing and bowing his theme in unison. But just at the moment this lovely air takes form, Lazro suddenly abandons his descant line to provide the chorale with a pedal-tone bottom. Why does he do this? Because it is necessary. What had been a variable speed violin/bass clarinet chordal accompaniment has mutated into parallel, multiple grace-note retches by those two instruments, so Lazro is needed down at the foundation level. Didier continues his tuneful lament in string and voice over Lazro’s substructure, and the regular (though spasmodic) heaves now emerging from the once tranquil couple continue only for a few harrowing seconds. Then the piece ends abruptly in a scream of terror. Although “Russian-Techno” ends anything but happily, it is a flawless gem of a short story. So much transpires in so little time that the piece can be seen as a vivid depiction in miniature of an eventful, if failed, life. Upon repeated hearings, one realizes that its opening chords foreshadow the fate of the protagonist to be abject failure and horror. That’s writing. And there are many such dramas on NHOC. There may have been no design involved in the original banging around of hydrogen and carbon atoms, but there’s ample evidence of several powerful intellects at work here. I recommend this disk very highly.