by Thom JurekThis live 1990 date involving three of Europe's finest clarinetists is a wonder of fiery excess, knotty instrumentalism, and elegant musicianship in both solo and group contexts. Beginning with Sclavis' multi-part "Berliner Suite," the trio moves at the speed of light through intervallic changes and scalar and modular exchanges with deft exchanges of microtonal expression -- where the multi-part tonalities expressed by one player are picked up in halves by the other two and fed back to the original soloist altered by dissonance or further tonal extrapolation for even more variation -- as the norm rather than the exception. Each of the three contributes either compositional frameworks for group exploration or improvisational thematics for deconstruction and re-appropriation. Does it swing? It depends on your view, of course. There is no stasis in this music, and it is performed with exacting detail. Sclavis comes off as the orchestrator of a jazz that is so intricate and full of detail that it's difficult to imagine it as improvisation at all. And yes, that's a good thing. In fact, the only all-clarinet record in memory that matches this one in intensity or regal flare is the original Clarinet Summit, Vol. 1 disc that featured David Murray, the late John Carter, Jimmy Hamilton, and Alvin Batiste.