Stephane Furic Leibovici

Kishinev is the 1991 Soul Note album by the quartet of French bassist and composer Stéphane Furic, who now works under the name Stéphane Furic Leibovici. Born in Paris in 1965, he spent the first part of his career in New York before returning to Europe, and this record finds him in his mid twenties with saxophonist Chris Cheek, pianist Patrick Goraguer and drummer Jim Black. Its centre is the title work, a suite for quartet of almost sixteen minutes named after the old Russian form of the name of Chisinau, the Moldovan capital. The album is dedicated to Simon and Zelia Leibovici.

The music was recorded in July 1990 at Blue Jay Studio in Massachusetts, with Mark Wessel engineering and Jonathan Wyner mastering at Northeastern Digital. Larry Phillabaum produced it together with Furic, Giovanni Bonandrini of Soul Note is credited as executive producer, and the liner notes are by Art Lange. Cheek plays tenor and soprano saxophones and Furic double bass; the label's own credits add Fender Rhodes to Goraguer's piano. There are five pieces in under forty minutes. The Sphinx opens the record at almost nine minutes, and the second track is titled Wayne Shorter, after the saxophonist and composer. New Alliance leads into the suite Kishinev, which on its own fills more than a third of the disc, and Two Deuces closes it at six minutes. The same quartet went to Milan in May 1992 to record The Twitter-Machine for the label, and the partnership with Cheek lasted well beyond it: the two later made the trio albums Jugendstil and Jugendstil II with clarinettist Chris Speed.

This is the Soul Note CD, catalogue number 121215-2, first released in 1991 and manufactured in Italy by PhonoComp.