Sweet Dog on the Moon’ revolves around the Sweet Dog trio’s encounter with two major players on the improvised music scene: multi-clarinetist Catherine Delaunay and singer Emilie Lesbros. The first, Catherine Delaunay, met by Julien Soro in Frédéric Maurin’s ONJ, is first and foremost a fabulous instrumentalist, with classical training ranging from early music to contemporary music. Then, when she turned to improvised music, she offered her recognisable and unique sound to large-scale projects by great French jazz musicians such as Marc Ducret, Claude Tchamitchian, Régis Huby, Hélène Labarrière etc. Her mastery of several clarinets, from the piccolo to the Cor Basset, makes her sound palette very broad and at the same time so personal and singular. The second, Émilie Lesbros, describes herself as a singer, poet and composer. She is also a multi-instrumentalist and improviser. She moved to New York in 2013 for eight years of collaborations with the cream of New York improvised jazz, notably saxophonist Darius Jones and double bassist Barre Phillips. Her powerful yet gentle voice is reminiscent of the great jazz vocalists Abbey Lincoln and Jeanne Lee, as well as folk singers Joni Mitchell, Agnès Obel and even Jeanne Added. The singularity of their improvisational discourse and the power of their own voices will enrich the raw material of the original trio’s sound. Free play and the ability to create compositions of varying complexity on the spur of the moment would remain the group’s mainstay. Sweet Dog’s sonic identity was shaken up by the addition of vocals and clarinet, giving the trio a lyrical lift and melodic entanglements that reinforced the orchestral aspect of the quintet. In addition to the pop-rock influences of Radiohead and Jim Black’s Alasnoaxis and the jazz influences of Tony Malaby and Chris Speed, the trio’s sound is also influenced by contemporary minimalist and electronic music.

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