Guitarist
Bill Frisell and double bassist
Thomas Morgan first appeared as a duo on 2017's
Small Town. Recorded in 2016 at the Village Vanguard, it offered conversations in jazz, folk, R&B, and pop with an intimacy and improvisational elocution seldom matched in recordings cut with a live audience.
Epistrophy was culled from the same Vanguard run proving the earlier recording no fluke. Like its predecessor, this nine-song set is comprised of jazz standards, folk and pop songs, show tunes, movie themes, and a
Paul Motian original. (Both men played with him.)
If anything, the choice of material here is cannier than
Small Town's, opening with "All in Fun" from the 1939 musical Very Warm for May. The loose, relaxed intro showcases the guitarist's abundant gift for lyricism and inventive rhythmic notions. The bassist answers and embellishes with a gentle swing before the tune becomes a more open-ended improvisational device. The
Carter Family's "Wildwood Flower" also appeared on
Small Town, but here it's part of a melody that concludes with a heartbreakingly beautiful reading of
Doc Pomus &
Mort Shuman's
Drifters' classic "Save the Last Dance for Me." The interplay on the latter, with its in-the-moment harmonic and rhythmic exchanges, is truly remarkable. They resurrect
Motian's lovely yet slightly angular "Mumbo Jumbo" with
Frisell extrapolating on the melody and chord voicings that open onto
Morgan's suggestions via harmonic counterpoint in the knottier passages. Where the earlier album boasted
John Barry's theme from Goldfinger, "You Only Live Twice" appears here, with
Frisell articulating some of his loveliest rubato playing, languidly quoting from
Ferrante & Teicher's
Midnight Cowboy theme.
Morgan responds to the guitarist's lines in tango rhythms.
Billy Strayhorn's "Lush Life" is revealed in all of its
Debussy-ian glory and stands in sharp -- but wonderful -- contrast to the approach on the two
Thelonious Monk tunes in the title track and "Pannonica," where angles, knots, and subtle humor are offered as holistic harmonic devices. These tunes, with their good-natured inquisitiveness and mischief, are both set highlights. "Red River Valley" (
Frisell first cut it with
Gary Peacock on 1994’s Just So Happens) is sprightly, swinging, and full of subtle grooves in its lyrical articulation, before the closer: a read of the standard "In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning" that echoes
Frank Sinatra's immortal vocal reading from the mid-'50s. Its economical approach whispers with bittersweet tenderness and delivers gorgeous soloing from
Morgan and
Frisell.
Epistrophy is a companion to
Small Town, but it is also an extension of the intimate, communicative union shared by this duo in near symbiosis. Together they create a gold standard for live performance. ~ Thom Jurek