A Lovesome Thing

Album review

A luminously realized duo performance, A Lovesome Thing spotlights the September 2012 concert between pianist Geri Allen and guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel recorded at the Philharmonie de Paris as part of the city's Jazz à la Villette Festival. Both Allen and Rosenwinkel had been circling each other for several years hoping to work together. The idea of a collaboration made sense as both artists were steeped in the post-bop jazz tradition, but whose varied performance experiences and inclinations toward advanced harmonic concepts made them distinctly compatible. Several months prior to this concert, Rosenwinkel had invited Allen to sit in with his band at the Jazz Standard in New York, an ad hoc meeting of creative minds that underscored their shared love of improvisational interplay and musical flow. It is that improvisational flow and sense of being present in the creative moment that they bring to this performance. They open with the album's title track, an impressionistic reading of the Billy Strayhorn ballad. Here, Rosenwinkel starts first, his starry chords offering a shimmering palette over which Allen paints her own cosmic, classical influenced lines. Their playing is rapturous and enveloping; it's like looking for constellations in the night sky. It's a vibe they sustain throughout the concert. Often it sounds as if they are discovering a song as they go along, as on "Embraceable You," where they offer glimpses of the melody under dense harmonic chords, like sculptors chipping away at a block of stone to reveal the body hidden within. Elsewhere, they present equally artful originals, including Rosenwinkel's "Simple #2" and Allen's "Open-Handed Reach." They also leap into a playful and dancerly take on Thelonious Monk's "Ruby My Dear." Throughout all of A Lovesome Thing, Allen and Rosenwinkel's playing is endlessly inventive and bright with the promise of more collaborations to come. Tragically, Allen would die from cancer in 2017, just two weeks after her 60th birthday. Thankfully, we have this concert as both an indelible reminder of her artistry and the intense musical empathy she and Rosenwinkel shared.

© Matt Collar /TiVo