Featured Artist: Steve Kuhn and Steve Swallow

CD Title: Two By 2

Year: 2007

Record Label: Sunnyside Records

Style: Straight-Ahead / Classic

Musicians: Steve Kuhn (piano), Steve Swallow (electric bass)

Review:

Thank goodness there is Sunnyside Records.  Releasing and rereleasing thoughtful and intuitive jazz for a number of years now, the independent jazz and world music label has supplied the world with a steady stream of solid and developmentally rich music for years.  On Two By 2, the label presents a 1995 recording by two jazz titans in a relaxed and intimate setting.

Pianist Steve Kuhn, who trained at both Harvard University and the Lenox School of Jazz, is joined by bassist Steve Swallow, who’s work with Paul Bley, Carla Bley, George Russell, Jimmy Giuffre and Gary Burton is legendary.  Together the two prove just how fluid, flexible, moldable and pervasively delicate jazz can be, yet still be full of excitement and totally captivating exhilaration.

The premise is simple, two giants get together to play down 11 different compositions, six by Kuhn, four by Swallow and one by Michael Colombier.  It really doesn’t matter what tunes they picked, because the recording is about musical relation and interaction.  Whether it be Swallow’s dramatic “Remember,” or Kuhn’s “Gentle Thoughts,” the two artists find ways to dance within and through each other’s musical phrases and lines with such skill you’d swear the music was all written out, note for note, long before they came together to collectively improvise.

Highlights include Swallow’s too oft neglected standard “Eiderdown” and Kuhn’s similarly lovely standard and poignant “Lullaby.”  Describing any specific tune is an exercise in frustration; words cannot describe the elaborate manner with which Kuhn handles his instrument with both finesse and ease.  He doesn’t play it as much as sing through it.  Equally consummate is Swallow’s playing.  He knows how to play under a melody, yet express just as much of a tune’s sentiment from the bottom as he does when taking over the role of lead line performer by playing the melody in the upper register.

There are few recordings where the true spirit of jazz is so starkly prominent and lovingly all-embracing as on this recording. 

Tracks: Gentle Thoughts, Two By Two, Remember, Wrong Together, Eidertown, Lullaby, Ladies In Mercedes, Deep Tango, Poem For # 15, Mr.Calypso Kuhn and Emmanuel

Record Label Website: http://www.sunnysiderecords.com/

Artist's Website: http://www.stevekuhnmusic.com/

Reviewed by: Thomas R. Erdmann

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