dusted

Photo by Bruno Charavet

A wise guy might clock the title, Re-Union, and ask, when are these guys apart? They’ve been musical compadres for over thirty years, during with time they have recorded dozens of records under the leadership of David S. Ware, Joe Morris, Ivo Perelman, and Shipp himself. However, pianist Matthew Shipp and double bassist William Parker had not made a duo recording for twenty years before they convened in a Paris studio in February, 2019 to record this one. So, while it’s unlikely they’d gone too long without seeing each other before that day, this album signals the resumption a very particular union.

The mode of creation here is total improvisation. But what does that mean when the two musicians have worked together so often over so many decades? They certainly know each other’s moves and abilities, so it’s not as though the music they make will shock either player, nor the listener. But their shared knowledge of one another’s ways generates an implicit trust that whatever one  man plays, the other will enhance it. This music is not about the reinvention or discovery of form, so much as co-occurrence of complementary energies which happens when they let loose in each other’s presence. It is a union of consciousnesses.

The title track, for example, begins with the two playing poised, swinging phrases, which serve to lay the groundwork for what comes next. Over twenty-two minutes, they build out from that foundation. Sometimes their playing coexists like cells of activity, separate but compatible. At other times, their ideas branch away from each other, only to converge with gestures so precisely placed, they could be two speakers who carry on a conversation from distant rooms, then walk in and finish each other’s sentences. Similarly, on “Further DNA,” Shipp spins out long, winding passages, which rarely repeat. Parker’s hurtling progress moves in parallel, similarly exploratory, until the moment when he strikes a couple low notes of perfectly placed counterpoint.

The differences between the duo’s work on Re-Union and what they’ve done on previous albums are more ones of degree; there’s less ballast to their playing, and a more streamlined fluency to the way each musician develops his ideas. But it is cut from the same cloth as Zo and DNA, reaffirming the power generated by their bond.

Bill Meyer