free jazz - duo/solo sessions POX c/d

I just realized that although duos are probably my favorite kind of group for free jazz, I hardly have any recordings. I do have fond memories of seeing Gerry Hemingway with John Butcher, among others though.

Didn't William Parker and Hamid Drake do a duo thing?

Re duos, I have some that I like quite a bit, notably the following, all fairly recent (mid-90s or later):
We Are Not At The Opera (Sabir Mateen/Sunny Murray)
Illuminators (Charles Gayle/Sunny Murray)
Brothers Together (Sabir Mateen/Hamid Drake)
Duos 2001 (Fred Anderson/Robert Barry)

And, taking a break from the sax/drums pairing:
Spirits Entering (Billy Bang/Kahil El'Zabar)
Soul Search (Joe Morris/Mat Maneri)
Light Trigger (Mat Maneri/drummer whose name I can't recall right now)

coltrane/ali - interstellar space
derek bailey - aida
evan parker - saxophone solos
keith rower - harsh, guitar solo
cecil taylor - silent tongues
sun ra - solo piano vol. 1/2
taku sugimoto - italia
sonny sharock - guitar
brotzmann/drake - dried rat dog
parker/rowe - dark rags

nels cline/gregg bendian - interstellar space
keith rowe/john tilbury - duos for doris
keith rowe/toshimaru nakamura - weather sky

Derek Bailey obviously owns this thread. I like him in solo acoustic mode -- AIDA, etc. And, he's done some superb guitar/percussion duo albums. CYRO (w/Cyro Baptista) is probably my favorite, and the live album with Han Bennink on Organ of Corti is wonderful as well.

Re: solo bass – I saw an Alan Silva solo (or maybe solo and duo?) LP at the most recent ‘FMU record fair, but it was a bit on the pricey side. Anyone know anything about it?

already mentioned ali/frank lowe- duo exchange
masayuki takayanagi/karou abe- gradual projection
cecil taylor/derek bailey- shaking the glass
john zorn/michihiro sato-ganryu island
paul rutherford- the gentle harm of the burgeoisie
milford graves- grand unification
lol coxhill-solo

x-post: I've heard a moto yoshisawa solo bass alb on PSF that is very good but haven't given it a listen (there are several that he released but i only got one).

Is that the one that Shock put out? I have that but haven't played it much. I'll have to wrestle it outta the stacks.

Favorite Bailey duos: Daedal with Susie Ibarra and Ore with Eddie Prevost.

I meant to say given it a listen for a while.

''Is that the one that Shock put out?''

yup.

must pick up a copy of 'duo for doris'.

Muhal Richard Abrams w/ Malachi Favors - "Sightsong"
Ornette Coleman w/ Charlie Haden - "Soapsuds, Soapsuds"
Anthony Braxton w/ Max Roach - "Birth and Rebirth"
Anthony Braxton w/ Taylor Ho Bynum - "Duets (Wesleyan) 2002"
Evan Parker w/ Barry Guy - "Obliquities"
Evan Parker w/ Ned Rothenberg - "Monkey Puzzle"
John Zorn w/ Fred Frith - "The Art of Memory"
Eugene Chadbourne w/ various - "Boogie with the Hook"
Ernst Reijseger w/ Louis Sclavis - "Et On Ne Parle Pas Du Temps"

Also one of the first instances of live jazz/improv/whatever I witnessed was the first ever meeting of Peter Brotzmann and Hamid Drake, here in Chicago at Southend Musicworks. Really a sort of life-changing concert for me; the first time I really learned to train my ears to follow the arc of freely improvised performance. I was just really mesmerized by the variety of textures and colors that two human beings working in tandem could create. It helped that the two in question are among the finest living players on their respective instruments. Drake demonstrating his mastery and spinning out entrancing polyrhythms on a staggering range of ethnic percussion intruments, Brotzmann responding with some his most inspired and downright lyrical playing. They immediately formed a sympathetic duo who continued to work together for the next decade-plus (and are in fact returning to Chicago later this very month - yay!) So yeah, another vote for Dried Rat-Dog.

Another wonderful concert I witnessed early on in my exploration of this music was a pairing of Roscoe Mitchell and Evan Parker, another first-ever meeting. As far as I know those two have not in fact made a recording, which is a real shame. Both being masters of circular breathing, they made a natural pairing. Their manipulation of extended techniques, forcing out microtones and prolonging them for lengthy unbroken stretches, bouncing them off of each other, coming in and out of harmony, creating dissonances and ripples that filled the space, absolutely blew my mind. Looking back it was kind of an exercise in minimalism, though I can't claim that they planned it as such. But that's why free music is wonderful, the endless variety of approaches and sonic material that can be generated by skillful players.

Roscoe's made a bunch of other duet recordings, including a nice one with Braxton. Perhaps my favorite recording of his is the solo performance of his composition "Nonaah" as captured on the 2lp set of the same name, a half-hour solo excursion presented over two sides of one of the lps. He begins with successive iterations of a simple melodic motif and continues to build upon it, adding more material and rhythmic variation over the course of the piece. I had a kind of epiphany listening to the thing one night about 8 years ago at 3 in the morning, after getting home from seeing David Ware perform and right before I got in a car to drive all night to visit a friend in Georgia. I need to listen to this thing again.

So, yeah ... anyway, some duo recommendations others have already made that I can heartily second:

Tony Oxley/Cecil Taylor - Leaf Palm Hand - this is the only performance from that big FMP box that I have, but it is phenominal; these two make great working partners.

Karuo Abe/Masayuki Takayanagi - Gradual Projection - I second Julio here in preferring this volume over its companion, Mass Projection, which is just a bit too full-bore for me. Maybe you're made of stronger stuff.

Fred Anderson/Robert Barry - Duos 2001 - this is really great, but I kind of prefer Anderson's earlier pairing with the late, great AACM drummer Steve McCall - available as Vintage Duets on Okka - simply because McCall is such a treat to hear.

Some other great duo recordings I can vouch for, with a bit of a Chicago bias cuz that's a lot of what I know-

Joseph Jarman/Anthony Braxton - Together Alone, early date from the two AACMers.
Anthony Braxton/Derek Bailey - Live at Wigmore; these two have recorded a few duets, and some of them keep getting repackaged under different titles so it can be confusing. Anyway, the date I love is June 30th, 1974. Really exciting stuff - tussling, then locking in, spiralling out psychedelic overtones, i.e. the good stuff.
I also really like Bailey in duet with John Stevens on Playing, on Incus.
Mars Williams/Hal Russell - Eftsoons on Nessa is a great duo date from the two reedists in Hal Russell's NRG Ensemble.
Ken Vandermark and Mars Williams made a duo reed recording under the name Cinghiale, Hoofbeats of the Snorting Swine. It's kind of a weird disc, lots of through-composed passage that give way to bouts of free bleating. In some ways it sounds like a Vandermark 5 disc without the rhythm section; so if he's not your bag, avoid it. I love it.
Speaking of great reed duos, don't sleep on the Jim Sauter/Donald Dietrich Bells Together record - the two Borbetomagus reedists sans Donald Miller.
Matt Gustafsson/Hamid Drake - For Don Cherry. I was at this show, the night that Don Cherry died. No one in the room had heard the news until Drake announced it to the crowd moments before the performance was to begin. The two proceeded to play their asses off, and thankfully it was preserved on disc.
Matt Gustafsson/Paul Lovens - Nothing to Read. A nice, slightly subdued but sympathetic date from 1990 on Blue Tower. Large stretches of this are very quiet.
Masahiko Togashi/Mototeru Takagi - Isolation. A sizzling duo from two titans of Japanese free jazz, Togashi on percussion and the recently deceased Takagi on reeds; recorded in 1969, clearly in the shadow of Interstellar Space. One side a real burn-fest, the other more introspective..

uh, is that ten yet? ok, i'll shut up now. there are tons more that are coming to mind as i type but i guess that's enough.

oh wait, i didn't talk about *bassists*. next post maybe.

so
Roscoe Mitchell : More Cutouts
Braxton : Trio and Duet, and
+ any other braxton + teitelbaums
Braxton/Jarman : the track with all the noise off Together/Alone

i cling to the notion that two harmonic + one drummer will often be in places a duo, but that theoretically it's all a duo of harmony/melody with support from the percussion. sometimes. (see below)

so, the Monads album by lewis extends that again into noise (although i like his duet album with with doug ewart, and "Homage to Charles Parker" is intriguing)

i've ground through several of the taylor duets, and i think the oxley effort is extraordinary, my favourite from the berlin sessions i've heard, leaving stuff like the moholo duet seeming a bit trad., which is the way i feel about taylor/roach from the previous decade too.

as to the european stuff, well i can't quite get to bailey, but evan parker's appetite seems completely justified. prevost/parker is fun, and that rowe/prevost AMM II japo project is almost pop music, hilarious and boring in places. pity about crispell/prevost. "the fire tale" from bergamn/parker is perplexing as are the bergamn/cyrille projects (+/- brotzmann).
the fmp stuff .. i like an old Kowald album from the '70s that i can't reference properly, and i like some of the Kowald duets that made it to cd

again, the percussion duet generally still seems like a vehicle for solo, sometimes, as if the notes would still be there if the percussionist wasn't. percussion often seems like navagation guides that i find unnecessary.
(and that's even easier for me to say about derek bailey duets, the ones with bailey seeimgly qua percussion, but the scatch/ bubble/ pop of the percussion language of bailey and of drummers in the british improv that used to revolve around bailey, amm and those such-n-such room constructs, they aren't locked in harmonically enough for me, not the ones i've heard)

all pales cf: brotzmann/kowald LIVE, which blew me away -- i should travel more -- (art/craft) Neslon, NZ '86 had them, serious big german blokes feigning language barrier in argument over door sales vs. guarentees -- and, the music might have even been revved up a bit more by that dispute too, less people than in europe even prepared to call it "music", but me entranced by these guys' long shared experiences boiling down to a saturated controlled rolling-out of so many ideas