Kenny Barron and Dave Holland The Art of Conversation Impulse! **** RECOMMENDED
The fine audio sound quality is the first thing that strikes you here, bathing the listener in warm waters, as there’s a great deal of sonic detail, then before you know it Holland rolls into a gently swooping figure, Barron circling in like a bird from the sky to land into the shimmer of ‘The Oracle.’
It’s the first time the pair have recorded as a duo although both have been playing concerts together since 2012, and began recording together long ago initially as part of a trio in the mid-1980s continuing in other playing situations the following decade. NEA Jazz Master Barron’s duo albums with other people include Regina Carter, and the late Charlie Haden, while Holland has recorded duos with Steve Coleman, and Sam Rivers, among others.
This last year there’s been an increased interest in the duo format, with German label ACT championing the format with no small success, plus the release of Last Dance from the Jasmine sessions, and even a new promising club setting up in New York tailor-made for duos, the deliciously-monikered Mezzrow.
What’s on The Art of Conversation are originals and standards, four of Holland’s compositions, including a sumptuous waltz dedicated to Holland’s friend Kenny Wheeler, who’s not in the best of health, and three of Barron’s plus a very jaunty take on Monk’s ‘In Walked Bud’, Bird’s ‘Segment’, where Barron himself practically takes flight, Holland tucking himself in tidily in the slipstream, and the Ellington/Strayhorn tune ‘Daydream’ just gorgeous.
There’s a lot of beauty here, and that’s no exaggeration, Holland’s tender thematic melody line at the outset of Barron’s ‘Rain’ the first big moment, Barron’s accompaniment so subtle it’s spellbinding, later the modified samba feel of ‘Seascape’ enough you’d swear to feel the wind on your face, to smell the salt in the air. An album more or less bound, for all the right reasons, to engender a lot of real love. MB
Released on 23 September. Kenny Barron, top left, and Dave Holland play the London Jazz Festival, in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, on 21 November