Daunik Lazro, Joelle Leandre, Hasparren

When an artist is as prolific as bassist Joelle Leandre has been lately, is there a point where more is redundant? Not when you have the consummate mastery of Ms. Leandre and her ability to interact with all kinds of interesting players. So if I had any latent misgivings of covering yet another disk by Ms. Leandre right now, they were immediately dispelled by hearing the disk at hand: Hasparren (No Business CD62) a duo set with baritone sax-man Daunik Lazro.

The two have been playing and sometimes recording together for more than 30 years. In 2011 they played together in Hasparren and the "tapes" were running. Good thing because they are on it for sure here.

The range of the baritone and that of the contrabass are of course very simpatico and the two make maximum use of range and timbre as two sides of a complementary totality. Ms. Leandre begins with some wonderful acro phrasings that Lazro responds to in kind and it goes from there to some wonderful spontaneous dialogues.

I won't go to a blow-by-blow description because it isn't necessary. Instead I'll just say that the set gives us the beauty that results when two masters freely respond to one another.

This is not a feather in either's cap. It IS a cap in itself. Listen closely and you'll be put in a very good place.