The Intercommunal Free Dance Music Orchestra was created in 1971 by French free jazz pianist legend, François Tusques. Free Jazz, was also the name of the 1965 recording Tusques made along with and other Michel Portal, François Jeanneau, Bernard Vitet, Beb Guérin and Charles Saudrais. Six years later, in 1971 Tusques would go ahead of free jazz.

Wondering if free jazz wasn’t a bit of a dead end together with Barney Wilen (Le Nouveau Jazz) or even solo (Piano Dazibao and Dazibao N°2), Tusques formed the Inter Communal Free Dance Music Orchestra, an association under the banner of which the different communities of the country would come together and compose, quite simply. If at first the structure was made up of professional musicians from the jazz scene it would rapidly seek out talent in the lively world of the MPF (Musique Populaire Française).French Popular Music, ndlt

As with L’Inter Communal a few years earlier, Le Musichien follows on from the group of varying musicians that Tusques had conceived as a “people’s jazz workshop”. In 1981, at the famous Paris address, 28 rue Dunois, the pianist sang with his partner Carlos Andreu “Le Musichien”, an Afro-Catalan tale over an exceptional bass line from Jean-Jacques Avenel backed by percussion from Kilikus, saxophones from Sylvain Kassap and Yebga Likoba and trombone from Ramadolf which presented a myriad of constellations. The sky has no limits, let’s make the most of it.

“Les Amis d’Afrique” is recorded the following year, at the ‘Tombées de la Nuit’ festival in Rennes, bassist Tanguy Le Doré would weave with Tusques the fabric on which would evolve an explosive “brotherhood of breath”: Bernard Vitet on trumpet, Danièle Dumas and Sylvain Kassap on saxophones, Jean-Louis Le Vallegant and Philippe Le Strat on... bombards. With hints of modal jazz inspired by Coltrane or Pharoah Sanders, the Intercommunal Free Dance Music Orchestra is an ecumenical project which speaks to the whole world.