Rudd, Roswell / Dresser, Mark

Air Walkers

Label: Clean Feed Country: Portugal

" "You never know enough", says trombonist Roswell Rudd in an interview about his attitude in life and music. He studied with a master - Herbie Nichols; played Monk with another one - Steve Lacy; was part of a legendary free jazz combo with the great John Tchicai, the New York Art Quartet; worked regularly with Archie Shepp; traveled in Africa to perform with local musicians, like the Malian kora player Toumani Diabaté; and he recently jammed with the experimental rock band Sonic Youth and formed an ensemble with Mongolian traditional musicians. Now, we have this duo session with bassist Mark Dresser, who like Rudd is a performer and composer with a personal and distinctive voice. Dresser has a clear love for the duo format, considering his partnerships with Mark Helias, Frances-Marie Uiti, Susie Ibarra, Ray Anderson and Denman Maroney. And in "Airwalkers" he is in an environment that he knows how to deal with very well. The two musicians have complementary approaches: as Rudd shows his fascination for the musics of the world, so Mark Dresser always expresses in some way his background in classical music, and the axis of all this is their musical idiom of choice, jazz, and it's within these parameters that they conceived and played what we hear on this new album: spontaneous inventions and structures with dance forms as a basis, be it waltzes, rags, or ballads. And of course we feel the urge to dance to it, even if what they do with the chosen conventional styles isn't conventional at all. Can you see the wings on your feet?"-Clean Feed