Ternoy Cruz Orins
The Theory Of Constraints
FRANCE CIRCUM-DISC CIDI2401 / CANADA TOUR DE BRAS TDB900075cd (2024)
French instrumental jazzy improvisation from Jérémie Ternoy, Ivann Cruz and Peter Orins on piano-guitar-drums respectively.
“The Theory Of Constraints” is a real model which seems to have evolved (or sprang from nowhere) in the 1980s, when every business-suited guru had an ingenious idea for how to improve business; this one, which I won’t bother to explain in detail, is predicated on the idea that in any business, you must first find your bottleneck and then restructure everything else around it – that is, if you want to improve productivity. Yes, it was entirely business-focussed and centred on the idea of making more money. As one whose career has been damaged by hare-brained business theories implemented by incompetent managers desperate to try the next shiny new thing, I reserve the right to remain sceptical. And since the whole world is now seeing the ghastly results of unfettered expansionism and globalism, perhaps many readers will share my doubts.
However, our French friends aren’t out to wreck companies, raid pension funds or rattle the stock exchange – they’re simply out to create improvised music, perhaps using The Theory Of Constraints as a metaphor for their process; or maybe even lifting its “five key implementation steps” (bleahh) away from the financial context, and applying it as a method to produce better improvisation. I’m not really sure if the latter is true, but the players do refer to an earlier project ten years ago which “opened up vast acoustic spaces for them”, and they claim that their work on today’s October 2023 sessions allows them to “play the tightrope walkers”. If any of the above implies tension or dynamics of some sort, you’d hardly know it from the tedious music hereon; after a small amount of lively percussive interplay on ‘Drum Buffer Rope’, the trio settle into balmy, aimless noodling. They certainly have opened a lot of acoustic space, but there’s now almost too much of it; it’s like a large loft apartment inhabited by artists, with only one tiny canvas leaning in the corner. (29/04/2025)