Come Sunday

by Thom Jurek Here is a mighty duet recording between sax great Assif Tsahar and über drummer Tatsuya Nakatani. While the notion of improvisation is at the heart of all 11 pieces here, it's far from all that there is. Tsahar is one of the great champion's of tonal dynamics. His esthetic is dictated by what is actually called for in discovering the way a tonal center displays not only color and openness, but also rhythmic possibility. The way Nakatani plays through this adds not only dimension, but also depth. Check out "J Walk," with its restrained palette that nonetheless opens onto a dais of slow-turning phrases based on a beat that is not so much played, but illustrated. It's a question of language and punctuation in a sonic setting. These pieces are all articulations of language stored, articulated, and reformed according to the principle of rhythm and dynamic. Harmonics play their role, but melody is a benefit here that is displayed as the direct result from the focus on elemental phraseology that constricts the impulse to free blow while opening up possibility syntactically and texturally from inside. This is an awesome dialogue that moves vanguard jazz in new and astonishing directions.