as mentioned the Marcoeur episode started towards the end of the previous century and was – luckily – only to last until 2005…
Hubert decided Marcoeurs project was far off his beef, he politely declined the offer and Julien Baillod from Neuchâtel’s “Ensemble Rayé” filled the gap. Since I was continuously heading with my whole equipment to Burgundy to rehearse by car, I’d pick up Julien on the way. Rehearsal after rehearsal resulted in a tight repertoire for Marcoeur’s live sextet which we recorded then for the album “L'” on Marcoeur’s own label.
It was well received, so we toured it until early summer 2005 in that constellation, left to right Eric Thomas, me (replacing the 3rd brother Gérard), Albert and Claude Marcoeur, Julien Baillod and Farid Kenfouf … The wallet of gigs was well filled with firm dates way into 2006. However, Albert came here (by mid-summer 2005) out of the blue and announced that our collaboration ended here and now, because, because… many obnoxious “arguments” were brought forth, as silly as me not “playing my instrument enough”… how was I to play with Lasse (Hollmer) if I didn’t play my instrument enough?!!!!… or that he’d hear “the same mistakes all the time” etc. etc…

I was that much taken aback by such fallatious allegations and – shock frozen – that it didn’t click into place, this was just a political move (as LKJ so rightfully put it) to bring Gérard back into place and – numb with incomprehension – I was foolish enough to hand over all the sampling data I done for the whole program of “L'”…
I brought in the sampler (a Kurzweil K2000) and was forced to buy a “spear” unit (another Kurzweil K2600) as well as a 32 channel mixing desk. Luckily I always travelled with the K2600 with me, but left the mixing desk and the spare K2000 at Marcoeur’s place…
Hence the schedule for the following year (everything already booked) was to bypass me for Gérald sitting in at my K2000 including my samples. Bybye to recoupe the investments (desk and a spare K2600)…
It took over a year until they deposited the mixing desk somewhere in Neuchâtel (for their convenience and for me to recoupe it there). For the K2000, they left a shabby backshish in the case with the mixing desk.
End of story.
A few months later my mother died and left mayhem between my brothers and sister which took another 5 years to “sort out”… after which I started a long and tedious “reconvalescence” of the soul…