A just-released album inVerso (Floating Forest) is a prime example. On it are a series of duos that the artists call "Nine Variations on an Intimate Moment," where closeness of musical orientation leads to a sort of uncanny, open oneness. It's Alessio Alberghini on soprano and baritone sax, with an excellently brandished-burnished sound, and Garrison Fewell on electric guitar, a singular player with a smart and inspired approach. The compositional frameworks are by Alberghini and Fewell, with two by the late luminary of the new jazz world, John Tchicai.
The frameworks can be filled with melodically song-like fluidity or be abstract in makeup, but in either case we hear some marvelously attuned duets throughout, two masters who are so compatible musically that, as Ed Hazell's liner notes state, they can feel free to go each in any direction that seems right with confidence that the other player will respond with something equally inspired and fitting.
The music is both free and concentric, with deep listening and deep concentration joining together with two lifetimes of expression and a sure sense of sounding. It becomes so unified that you stop listening in terms of, "here's the guitar, now the sax is doing x, y or z." It is simultaneous sounding in the highest realm. At the same time what Alberghini and Fewell do on their instruments define the parameters of how wide-ranging freedom can somehow sound pre-ordained, have an inevitability that is in fact anything but.
If you are a guitarist, a reed player, and/or just get off on great sounds, this one is the right one for all that. It is a superb example of the art of improvisation today. So grab a copy, already.
