A jazz record for sure, but a jazz that, installed in the center of this music, would stand on tiptoe? This is how its leader, Claude Evence Janssens, introduces Instants when he defines himself as "a jazzman who would not really be that one". Composer of the entire album, Janssens is, moreover, a surprising instrumentalist since he plays trombone-flugelhorn but also bass clarinet, paradoxically marrying mouthpiece and reed within a album that binds bursts of fanfare to the potential of the bop and what ensued. In short, a nice success belonging, without discussion, to the (big) family of African-American music.   

Philippe Ellem