The Most Beautiful Sounds Next to Silence

Catalan pianist Jordina Milla and British bassist Barry Guy are highly skilled improvisers, as this Munich concert attests, but they also have fascinating individual sounds. The former’s touch on the keyboard, and the latter’s on the fretboard are both marked by subversion and invention in equal measure.

The six parts of their spontaneous conversation certainly catch the ear for timbres alone, as the 22- minute opener summarizes the richness of vocabulary that Guy has developed over 50 years. His upper register articulation is startling, to the extent that he hybridizes cello, violin and harp without pastiching any one, his needle-sharp glissando assuming a vocal quality on occasion. Most importantly, it melds to great effect with Milla’s work on the piano interior, and her stark scraping and dampening of notes make the exchanges bristle with a febrile, electric eel energy. Yet the wide dynamic range, and desire to come at tonality from exciting tangents is supplemented by the gentlest of melodies, peeking through the maelstroms of sound, bringing to the performance tenderness that offsets the turbulence, especially when Guy bows his bass so lightly it wafts and whistles in quavered melancholy.

In contrast, Milla raking the strings unleashes a thunderous power that electronic music producers would do well to analyse. Emphatically original, uncompromisingly provocative work from an outstanding duo.

(https://www.jazzwise.com)