Nicolas Masson’s acquaintance with his fellow quartet travelers Colin Vallon, Patrice Moret and Lionel Friedli goes back roughly two decades – in this time the players have developed an intimate musical bond, expressed purely and beautifully on Renaissance, the group’s second recording for ECM after 2018’s Travelers.

Comprised exclusively of originals by the Swiss saxophonist and one collective improvisation, the album’s spotlight shifts between contrasting moods and shapes, capturing the venturesome leader stretching his compositional muscle in evocative interplay with his colleagues.

Renaissance keeps the promises made on Travelers, and at the same time expands on the formal structures of Nicolas’s earlier compositions, inducing the quartet interplay with more freedom and emphasizing the leader’s layered idiomatic reach.

The band is in a searching spirit on rubato pieces like the expressive “Tremolo” or the ambient “Tumbleweeds”, mathematical on the more cerebral cuts like the title track “Renaissance”, but always operate with a lyrical disposition at heart, as heard elsewhere on the record and with a particularly gripping melodiousness on “Anemona.”

“It’s a special album for me,” notes the Swiss saxophonist, “the tenth as a leader or co-leader. Renaissance is its title for several reasons – one of them being that it also feels like the beginning of something new in my artistic endeavor – a personal renaissance, if you will. And fortunately the music turned out exactly the way I had it in mind to begin with.”

1. “Tremolo”
2. “Renaissance”
3. “Anemona”
4. “Tumbleweeds”
5. “Subversive Dreamers”
6. “Forever Gone”
7. “Practicing the Unknown”
8. “Spirits”
9. “Moving On”
10. “Basel”
11. “Langsam”

This breathtakingly cultured new recording opens on the stoically dutiful “Tremolo” and the delicately translucent “Renaissance” and then comes the lucid “Anemona,” the stridently cinematic “Tumbleweeds” and the emotive “Subversive Dreamers.”

Recorded at Studios La Buissonne in Southern France, along next is the sweetly rhapsodized “Forever Gone” which is in turn followed by the all-embracing “Practicing the Unknown,” the sheer low-lying elegance of “Spirits,” the set rounding out on a stillness that chicly resonates within “Moving On,” the graceful “Basel,” closing on a refined sophistication within “Langsam.”

Nicolas Masson made his ECM debut with Third Reel – the bass-less trio featuring drummer Emanuele Maniscalco and guitarist Roberto Pianca – on their eponymous 2013 album, followed by a second recording with the same band, Many More Days (2015) – “Music far removed from the barbs; virtually removed from this world.” (Neue Züricher Zeitung)

His leader-date Travelers fronting the quartet with Colin Vallon, Patrice Moret and Lionel Friedli followed in 2018. Colin Vallon’s history with the label dates back even further, to 2011’s trio album Rruga – Patrice Moret having been part of his trio from the very beginning. Collaborative albums of Vallon’s as part of Elina Duni’s quartet followed, as well as three more trio records, Le Vent, Danse and 2024’s Samares, with music that is “very cautious, very unconventional, atmospheric and precise at the same time”, according to the Weltwoche’s Peter Rüedi.

Nicolas Masson - Subversive Dreamers (from the new album Renaissance) - Official Teaser | ECM Records

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