CD: Kaleidoscopie

Having heard about Lionel from last year’s National Swiss Youth Band course, I was looking forward to hearing this CD and, from the first track, you know you are in for something very special. Lionel is no ordinary soloist, demonstrating a technique that defies logic.

The tracks chosen for this album display variety and imagination. After an impressive rendition of Steve Sykes’s Carnival Cocktail, we hear the title track by Gilles Rocha - Kaleidoscopie, which displays all the virtuosity that you would expect from the Valais - a French-speaking part of Switzerland, where the standard of solo playing is unbelievably high.

Lionel’s colleague in the trombone section of Brass Band 13 Etoiles is Bertrand Moren and his arrangement of Astor Piazolla’s Oblivion is a fitting contrast. We then hear an original work by Bertrand - Concertino in Blue, on which Lionel won the Sion Solo contest in Switzerland, in 2015. Again, this is an outstanding showcase of technical brilliance!

Just when you think Lionel is a player of nothing other than sheer technique, he then delivers impressive musicality in Peter Graham's The Holy Well (misspelt in the programme notes), followed by Largo al Factotum, accompanied by 13 Etoiles, in which the energy of the soloist’s playing is completely captivating. There is a further work from Gilles Rocha entitled Fly or Die, but I think what most impressed me was Lionel’s rendition of Blue Bells of Scotland, played on bass trombone at the tenor trombone pitch, which really is something to experience.

Damien Lagger, another trombone colleague from a rival band in the Valais, wrote the next piece, Battle Between Evil Snakes, for Lionel and, in this and Big Apple (again by Bertrand Moren), the bass trombone is heard as it has never been heard previously as a solo instrument. A quartet version of MacArthur Park, in which Lionel multi-tracks all four parts, closes the CD, which I can recommend to all brass players. My only criticism is the quality of the disc design and the lack of detailed programme notes.

DR. BRETT BAKER - TROMBONE SOLOIST

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