Victoria Jordanova & Jérôme Descamps - A Second Orb (Aut Records, 2025)

 By Stef Gijssels

The joy of being a reviewer is to get exposed to both known and unknown musicians, to be enthralled by novelty and totally different sonic universes. This album offers such a unique experience. Serbian classical harpist Victoria Jordanova and French jazz trombonist Jérôme Descamps meet for a minimalist conversation, a dialogue between two seemingly unrelated instruments. 

The music is calm, slowly moving forward in a strange sonic environment, with the fresh and delicate ringing tones of the harp contrasting sharply with the deep gliding sounds of the trombone. The effect is ethereal and mesmerising, soothing and fascinating at the same time. 

Jordanova was trained at the Music Academy of Belgrade University, she resided at the Cité International des Arts in Paris, during which time she studied harp with Jacqueline Borot, professor at the Conservatoire National de Paris. She also holds a Masters of Arts in Musicology from New York University. Jérôme Descamps began his career as a classical trombonist in symphonic orchestras, then came the discovery of improvised music, free jazz and contemporary music, with a strong leaning to the free improv sound of the United Kingdom. We reviewed his album "Antipodes" with the Sakay quartet several years ago. Descamps also plays the cello. 

The duo brings us nine relative short tracks, clocking a little over thirty minutes in total, but that's fine. It makes the music even more precious, gem-like. 

You can describe the music as dreamy, meditative, slowly evolving, searching and probing, in a gentle and kind way, tender. The duo embroider a feathery fabric that is at once frail and breakable as well as solid. Every sound has its place. The fragility of the harp sounds find security with the deep sounds of the trombone. It is the contrast of the timbre of both instruments, together with the steady evolution of the high quality improvisation around a thematic structure that determines the success of this album.

A new listening experience. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp.