There’s nothing quite like listening to two pals make music together. Incantation is a good example. Saxophone, stritch, and trumpeter blower Caleb Wheeler Curtis invited pianist Jason Moran into the studio for a duet session, and the results capture the pure joy in the collaboration.
Listen to the way the pair attack Arthur Blythe’s funky “Miss Nancy,” like two kids who were just given a trampoline, or the cheeky method in which they bounce licks off each other on Curtis’ “Flotation Device and the Shivers,” or the furrow they dig into the blues on Orrin Evans’ “Big Small” – these two came to have some fun. Or just hear all that fizzy energy pumped into the freely improvised “One Hundred Years,” and the boiling undercurrent in the equally spontaneous “Archaeology.” When the duo slows down, they understand the assignment – hence the way they wrap their instruments around each other on the pianist’s “Gangsterism On a River,” the saxist’s “Ain’t No Storm,” and Noah Garabadian’s “Tiramisu For Two,” as lyrical a trio of ballads as you’ll be likely to hear this year. Moran’s “Restin’,” meanwhile, stretches its melody out into a flat field, as the shimmer of the rising sun casts a mysterious glow across the horizon. It’s followed immediately by Curtis’ title tune, which chronicles the walk across that same grass.
Put two talented people in a room and tell them to just go, and you’ll get something interesting. Put two extremely talented folks who trust each other’s creativity in that same room, as with Incantation , and you’ll get magic.
