The French cellist Vincent Segal is one of those peripatetic players who shows up across the musical frontier: on albums by Sting or “barefoot diva” Cesária Évora, on an arthouse film score or a dancefloor remix of Bumcello, the duo he formed with drummer Cyril Atef almost a quarter of a century ago. Segal’s most feted collaboration remains with Malian kora master Ballaké Sissoko on Chamber Music (2009) and Musique de Nuit (2015), where they pulled the traditions of Africa and Europe into a seductive neoclassical fusion.
Here, the pair are joined by accordionist Vincent Peirani and soprano sax player Émile Parisien on a venture that proves just as irresistible, even if its title translates as The Lost. It’s a sprightly, restless set, with Segal’s plucked cello providing a thrumming heartbeat to what is a communal, improvisational approach. There are reflective pieces – Sissoko’s Ta Nyé and Banja bookend the record in flurries of kora – but more typical is the group’s reworking of the late Joe Zawinul’s Orient Express, while on Esperanza the quartet seem to be channelling a drunken Colombian cumbia. Although inflected by various accents – there’s a Balkan feel to Izao, a touch of John Coltrane to Parisien’s sax – this is truly fusion music.
