It is not uncommon for free improvised concerts released as albums to have their uninterrupted sets broken into discrete tracks. This is often explained as "provided for convenience only". Nothing could be more bizarre. Free improvisation is the furthest thing from convenient. It requires immense patience, unwavering attention and, most importantly, at least some of the long-term thinking of the musicians themselves.

Rare is a document of a 2024 performance by French pianist Sophie Agnel and English tenor/soprano saxophonist John Butcher from the 40th edition of Canada's Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville. It came five years after a Berlin concert released by Ni-Vu-Ni-Connu as La Pierre Tach�e and two years after Agnel was part of a Butcher-led large ensemble in Huddersfield put out as Fluid Fixations by Weight of Wax (she also participated in another edition earlier this month).

Butcher is ten years older and far more ensconced in the free improvisatory realm than Agnel, but their pairing has no hierarchy, no hesitation. The album is split into five sections of 9:17, 18:15, 4:36, 11:29 and 5:15. But, to return this review's introductory screed, it makes no sense not to listen to the entirety of the set and emulate the act of being there. Don't scroll, eat potato chips or go to the bathroom. There is simply no other way to follow the tendrils of musical thought this duo spin out across their just-under 49 minutes together.

Speaking in generalities, things move between a more atomistic British style of non-idiomatic improvisation to a more fervent continental approach. Abstracting further, the show sounds like a spontaneous accompaniment to Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Butcher and Agnel as Oberon and Titania, respectively: otherworldly, impish, grandiose. They draw a listener into their world with a healthy mix of sharp turns and slower thematic development, extended techniques from both widening the aural palette.