Lauren Newton & Joëlle Léandre
LEO Records: CD LR 450 
http://www.leorecords.com/?m=select&id=CD_LR_450

* Joëlle Léandre: bass, voice
* Lauren Newton: voice

Homepage
~~~~~~~~ 
http://www.joelle-leandre.com/ 
http://www.laurennewton.com/

Reviews
~~~~~~ 
http://www.allmusic.com/album/r813530
by Scott Yanow

On an occasional basis for over a decade, Lauren Newton and Joëlle Léandre have
teamed up for free improvisations. This live set has the adventurous yet warm
wordless vocals of Newton interacting closely with Léandre's bass and sometimes
her voice too. The nine improvisations have their scary and violent moments but
in general are more accessible and witty than expected. Newton has a very
flexible voice and Léandre has the ability on bass to echo her ideas when she is
not challenging her. The results are quite stimulating.

Joelle Leandre: Face It!; Lugano; At the Le Mans Jazz Festival 
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=23978
By Kurt Gottschalk

Double bassist Joëlle Léandre ranks right up there with Derek Bailey, Roscoe
Mitchell and Cecil Taylor as among the best of solo performers. Like them, she
has a developed, distinctive voice, an innate sense of logic and spontaneous
composition and the talent to make each performance a new event. But Léandre is
also a group player and seems to approach duos and ensembles not just with a
sense of who she's playing with but for the size of the group. In a quartet, she
never fills more than 25% of the space, which isn't just a simple bit of math,
it's a rare quality. And while she has a wealth of solo recordings, a few recent
releases show her as a compelling ensemble player.

Face It! is the third disc Léandre has made with American ex-pat vocalist Lauren
Newton (after a previous duo, the excellent 18 Colors and Out of Sound with
saxophonist Urs Leimgruber). The recording, from the 2005 Le Mans Jazz Festival,
shows their shared sensibilities. It starts a bit slow, but by 10 minutes in,
they're deep in shared consciousness, finding drama and humor with equal
ease. On top of her talent as a bassist, Léandre is a powerful vocalist,
although she makes sparing use of it. It's hard not to wait for her to match
Newton's vocalese in kind, but they still pair off well for most of the set's 40
minutes.

[...]