Lingua Franca: the language that allows different peoples to understand one another. And what better instrument than the clarinet - voice of klezmer, Alpine folk, New Orleans jazz - to speak across borders? Daniele D'Agaro was born in 1958 in Spilimbergo, Friuli, at the foot of the eastern Alps, where Italy, Austria, and Slovenia merge at a cultural crossroads. In 1979 he debuted with Andrea Centazzo's Mittel Europa Orchestra, then Berlin, then Amsterdam from 1983 - where the Dutch improvised scene was exploding with creative energy. There he joined the J.C. Tans Orchestra, Sean Bergin's M.O.B., Frankie Douglas's Sunchild. And there he formed the Lingua Franca Trio with American cellist Tristan Honsinger and Dutch bassist Ernst Glerum.

Recorded June 28, 1989, this disc captures the trio in one of the scene's most unusual configurations: clarinet, cello, double bass. No drums, no piano. Just three voices interweaving in suites that mix Italian, Dutch, English titles - "Qualche Volta/Polka/Zachila," "Il Nonno/Jack The Knife/Couples," "Wee-Wee/Bouja/Semaforo." Friulian folk, European chamber music, American free jazz, South African kwela - all converging.

Honsinger - veteran of Cecil Taylor, Derek Bailey, Steve Lacy - brings that unique combination of classical rigor and improvisational anarchy. Glerum - pillar of Misha Mengelberg's ICP Orchestra - anchors everything with a bass that sings. And D'Agaro, with that clarinet sound revealing his Alpine roots while speaking the language of the avant-garde, holds the threads together.

In 1996 D'Agaro would return to Udine, carrying with him the unpublished manuscripts of Don Byas discovered in Amsterdam's jazz archives. But Lingua Franca remains the document of those Dutch years - when an Italian from Friuli found his voice in a language everyone could understand.