Kor

Recorded live in Paris at the Olympic Cafe in 2008, Kor is an album of shared improvisations by French contrabassist Joëlle Léandre and Hungarian multi-instrumentalist Akosh S. who has chosen to abbreviate his surname Szelevényi. Their previous duo album, Györ was released in 2003. Akosh S. is a formidably versatile instrumentalist who juggles bass clarinet, metal clarinet, soprano and tenor saxophones, flutes and bells throughout the seven episodes that make up Kor. Born in Debrecen, Hungary in 1966, he relocated to Paris in 1986 and has recorded with his own Akosh S. Unit, as well as with countryman and free improviser Kovács Ákos, professionally known as Ákos. All of this adds up to an international conspiracy of free improvisers, with Léandre occupying a position somewhere near the epicenter along with people like William Parker, Anthony Braxton, and Terje Rypdal. Speculation as the to the meaning of the word "Kor" would need to take in the possibilities that Léandre is referring to a river in Iran, a bed owned by Hel, that chthonic goddess from Norse mythology, or Komitet Obrony Robotnikov, a certain Polish labor organization. In a purely anarcho-poetic sense, the idea that all three answers are simultaneously correct is not entirely out of the question, for minds like these can and do work in mysterious ways.