FRANCOIS COUTURIER & TARKOVSKY QUARTET - Nuit Blanche

"...Impeccably sequenced as usual, Nuit Blanche demonstrates continued growth for Couturier and Tarkovsky Quartet. The music may be dissonant and hard-edged, as it is on the appropriately titled "Vertigo" or similarly dark-hued but more spacious "Traum V" (another spontaneous creation which immediately follows); it might be more direct and immediate in its thematics, as is the pianist's Zen-like title track; or it may employ simple but harmonically oblique arpeggios to support a pointillistic saxophone solo, with Lechner using the body of her cello as a spare percussion instrument, as takes place on Couturier's "Soleil sous la pluie." 

No matter what direction Tarkovsky Quartet takes, the music of Nuit Blanche is largely more suggestive than it is explicit. A finely hued combination of melody and texture, scripted form and unfettered free play, and a distinctive group sound that has nevertheless expanded, album after album, as the quartet has continued to embed more and more touchstones in its music, Nuit Blanche is this exceptional chamber group's finest album to date...and with the trilogy now a quartet, the hopes that Couturier will continue his winning streak with more cinematically inspired work with this wonderful ensemble." - All About Jazz