Pierre Favre: Bird Food

Captured live at Radio Studio Zurich in 1968, this is the earliest known recording of the Pierre Favre Trio, dormant for more than half a century until Favre and trombonist Samuel Blaser unearthed it while sorting through forgotten tapes. That it survived at all feels faintly miraculous, the jazz equivalent of finding cash in an old winter coat.

The lineup now reads like a rough sketch of European free jazz before the paint dried. Pierre Favre anchors the session with concentrated intensity, already displaying the instincts that would make him one of the continent's defining percussionists. Pianist Irene Schweizer—who penned three of the four compositions—plays with fearless abandon, her Cecil Taylor influence worn proudly and loudly. Then there is the bassist credited here as Jiří Mráz, years before he became George Mraz in the United States, where he would go on to support figures such as Dizzy Gillespie, Oscar Peterson, Stan Getz and Tommy Flanagan with remarkable versatility.

The program is lean but loaded: four tracks in roughly 30 minutes, beginning with Ornette Coleman's title piece before shifting into Schweizer's originals. The Coleman composition establishes the atmosphere immediately—a collective urge to dismantle structure simply to examine what remains standing afterward.

"Sound II" drifts like a cosmic lullaby assembled from jagged angles and sudden detours, the trio moving through asymmetrical currents that rise and collapse without warning. "Hinten," by contrast, charges ahead with sharp momentum. Schweizer pushes the piano into overdrive while Favre hovers nearby and  Mraz stretches confidently across the shifting terrain, threading fluid lines through Favre's subtle but persistent undercurrent.

Schweizer's closing work, "The Attack," earns its title honestly. Her left-hand hammers out dense, dissonant clusters while the right searches stubbornly for melodic daylight amid blues fragments and bop-inflected runs. Favre responds with controlled force, then eases away just enough to let silence finish the sentence.

This 57-year-old radio tape holds up rather well. Still, headphones repay the effort. They separate the instruments and reveal the micro-dynamics that make Favre's quieter gestures every bit as compelling as his louder eruptions. In the end, Bird Food stands as raw evidence of three musicians already operating beyond their years—a session that required neither spotlight nor audience to burn with complete conviction.

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