Paul Bley/Frank Kimbrough duo piano concert

[brownie]

Duo Piano concert I would have loved to attend

Review in The New York Times today.

WHEN A DUO IMPROVISES ON PIANOS, THERE'S TIME FOR A COFFEE BREAK

By BEN RATLIFF

Published: May 24, 2006

Jazz duo-piano concerts are a little sleepy, even at best. They're usually unrehearsed, for better or worse. They are also usually overly polite or lumpy and muddled, and the audience's experience relies too heavily on the relationship that the pianists appear to have: whether they seem competitive or mutually admiring, whether they are peering at each other across some perceived aesthetic divide or whether they are enacting some variation of teacher-and-student.

The duo of Paul Bley and Frank Kimbrough at Merkin Concert Hall on Monday night, part of the hall's "No Minimum" series of piano duets, got closest to the teacher-student example. But it gave sufficiently stubborn resistance to the predictability of the format.

Mr. Bley is 73 and sets an example of stout courage for many musicians, but especially for the 49-year-old Mr. Kimbrough, who has incorporated much of the feeling of the elder musician's playing into his own.

Extremely hard to define — except as an improviser, full stop — Mr. Bley sets up no hierarchical divisions between completely free improvising and moving fluidly through changes on composed standards and originals. Rhythmically, his improvisations rocket off into his own lyrical areas, separate from a song's given pulse, but he doesn't kill the song. He leaves space in his playing; shores up a jagged, unmoored line with blues and gospel phrases; and produces beautiful, useful tension. He establishes, most of all, that he has choices and that he's in control.

The concert did not start the usual way. There was no introduction and requisite applause. As the audience filed into the hall, the pianists were already sitting onstage, chatting with friends around Mr. Bley's bench. At a certain point the lights dimmed, Mr. Bley looked at his watch and started imposing his will upon the keyboard's low notes.

For a while he brushed past the changes of "All the Things You Are," pounding and rolling varied patterns on top: even when the music was totally irresolute, he got an impressive, declarative sound out of the interest. There was a little melody and then aggressive free play, and then some melody again; sometimes it was like rotating the dial between stations on a radio. He stopped and drank some coffee. (Mr. Bley has defended the improviser's right not to worry about the audience; impressively, it looked as if he stopped because he wanted to drink some coffee.) Then he began, delicately, a version of "I Loves You Porgy"; at several points he laid down gorgeous little blues phrases with mobile backing harmony, but never fetishized them. He just kept reshaping.

He left, and Mr. Kimbrough appeared, starting "A Night in Tunisia" with a churning bottom rhythm that allowed him to reveal the melody as he liked, and thereafter he played a couple of his own tunes: warped and embellished, but recognizably tunes. The duo portion began when Mr. Bley felt like beginning it. Mr. Kimbrough set up a rippling left-hand vamp, riding on it with the melody from Thelonious Monk's "Coming on the Hudson"; it was dense and self-sufficient and seemed to offer a challenge to Mr. Bley. Mr. Bley responded by leaning into the piano and plucking its strings.

The pianists went back and forth in playing louder or taking a melodic lead, while Mr. Bley just played a more brutal version of himself: he lodged melodic shards into the music, strong and gargly and forthright. Together they played, or referred to, "I Can't Get Started," followed by a version of Annette Peacock's "Mr. Joy," introduced with dampened single notes.

After 70 minutes, they stopped and stood for applause. These concerts always have intermissions, and many members of the audience stayed seated, discussing whether it was really over. A few stagehands started moving the pianos off the stage, and it was only then that the performance really finished.

Edited May 24, 2006 by brownie