Deep in the course of the 2008 annual saxophone conference that the Vision Festival in large part always becomes, there was a quiet, lovely (and hugely well received) recital by a pair of masterful players. Bassist Mark Dresser and pianist Denman Maroney are rarely if ever about flamboyance or velocity, or even volume really, but they managed to put a hush over the packed house with their slippery, serene music.
Thirty-one minutes of that set make up the first half of the duo's Live in Concert, the balance being culled from a show in Chicago seven years earlier. Maroney tends to spend considerable time inside the piano case, sliding and scraping objects around to undermine the instrument's fixed intervals. Paired against Dresser's double bass, there is often considerable overlap in the voices, which creates a wonderful sense of possibility to the recording — like the aural equivalent of a pond, seemingly still but always in motion, and with the potential at any moment for a surprising little eddy, a buzzing insect skimming the surface or an unanticipated croaking frog. Dresser and Maroney have a strong understanding of their common territory, and a shared determination to explore it fully.
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Kurt Gottschalk 2009-05-21
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