Four hands, one vision
A brilliantly executed live piano duo performance by two keyboard legends
Vijay Iyer and Craig Taborn The Transitory Poems
Vijay Iyer, Craig Taborn (pianos)
ECM 2644
The recorded jazz piano duo goes back at least as far as Ellington and Strayhorn and reached a distinctive peak in the work of the UK’S own Howard Riley and Keith Tippett. Yet the attendant mixture of musical and logistical complications has given the form a frustratingly intermittent history. Add to this the fact that this recording from Vijay Iyer and Craig Taborn is brilliant on its own terms, and the reasons for celebrating its release are indisputable.
The ability of both protagonists can naturally be taken as read, but what’s remarkable is the way in which they deploy every imaginable strategy in this set of what must be largely improvised pieces. There’s co-operation and confrontation, unity and conflict, subtle transitions and headlong interventions, but no sense of contrivance; the music just flows from one state to another with a mixture of energy and grace that both defines and transcends this genre known as ‘jazz’.
Recorded at the Liszt Academy in Budapest, where one can no doubt count on finding a couple of finely-matched instruments, the sound balances the usual ECM mellifluousness with exactly the right amount of hard-edged detail. ★★★★★