Duets with James Carter

 Just came back from Montreal where I performed duo at the Sal Gesu with multi-reedist sensation James Carter. A very surreal gig because we really didn't even know until the last minute whether the gig would be on. Montreal and my hometown of Ottawa had been engulfed in the worst freezing rain disaster in history; literally hundreds of thousands of people were without power, with thousands of utility poles knocked out, literally millions of trees permanently demaged, the army called in to help, and even several deaths, including a woman who lived down from one of my first homes in Ottawa. My first piano teacher and my family had made it a habit to come up from Ottawa (only 2 hours away) for any gigs I did in Montreal, but even they had to re-consider as they pondered the difficulties. As it turned out, the concert went on as scheduled, and my father and brother even managed to show up, despite the conditions. The audience, perhaps happy for a break from all of the calamity, came out in large numbers, and so we played to a near-capacity, very enthusiastic crowd. I've "reported" about James before, and my feelings haven't changed - he really has a facility on all of the horns he plays (for this gig he "only" brought a flute, bass clarinet, tenor sax and soprano sax) which is chilling. And it's an enjoyable challenge I think for both of us to play in a pared down context in which interaction is at a maximum - I would say the vast majority of the concert was completely improvised, and a result of us musically fueling and playing off of each other, and I think we ended up playing 4 pieces in about 90 minutes of playing. And while James' solos tend towards the long side, I see this really as a positive; in an age where so many musicians his (and my) age rely on re-hashed cliches and rarely break a sweat, James is literally bursting with musical ideas, on not one but ALL the horns. So a very enjoyable experience which I'm already looking into repeating sometime soon....