La Buissonne in cooperation with ECM Records presents cellist Vincent Courtois’ ‘Love of Life’ with Robin Fincker (clarinet, tenor saxophone) and Daniel Erdmann (tenor saxophone), all the album’s compositions are based on Jack London novels and short stories.
After an open tribute to film-music composers (Bandes Originales / 2017), the trio takes hold of the immense work of Jack London and produce an album, recorded on the lands of the writer in California, portraying the complexity and beauty of the author’s 1909 novel, Martin Eden.
They crossed the Atlantic accompanied by the sound engineer Gerard de Haro (La Buissonne) and first played a couple of shows on the east coast (Boston, New York) before reaching the bay of San Francisco where a recording with an audience had been organized. The day before the recording, an appointment was made with Jack London’s great-grand daughter Tarnell Abbott, in the writer’s farmhouse which has become an historic park on the eastern slope of Mount Sonoma. Vincent Courtois, Daniel Erdmann and Robin Fincker even improvised on the author’s grave, a few meters from the ruins of his ranch. This moment was captured by the photographer Lo c Vincent and was to become the Love of Life album’s cover. Vincent Courtois is well known to ECM fans as the cellist on ECM albums by Stefano Battaglia, Yves Robert and, of course, Louis Sclavis.
