Breaking the Ice [live]

by Thom JurekLegendary Copenhagen bassist Níels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen teamed up with Dutch pianist Florís Nico Bunnínk at the end of a jazz/classical bass workshop in 1988 for a one-off concert. They met 15 minutes before going on stage and let it rip. This set, issued by the wonderful Bvhaast label in 1998, is a pleasant surprise, a true treat for jazz bass fans and those who love duets. The leader here is clearly Pedersen, with his driving, fluent, strident tone carrying not only rhythm, but often melody too, above the painterly, languid stylings of Bunnínk. It should be mentioned that Bunnínk is no newcomer to the jazz scene, nor is he a second-class musician just because he is unknown to Philistine American jazz fans. The pianist has performed with a range of front row improvisers including Oscar Pettiford, Chet Baker, Lester Young, Sonny Stitt, Billie Holiday, Bobby Hutcherson, the Montgomery Brothers, Benny Golson, Booker Ervin, Dinah Washington, Jimmy Knepper, and Charles Mingus; fine company indeed. This date is comprised primarily of standards with one Pedersen original, the lovely "Samba Petite," thrown in for measure. The set opens with "All the Things You Are," taken at an unusually brisk pace. Pedersen sets the melody solo and Bunnínk kicks in with a series of augmented chords before entering into its body full force, comping in counterpoint, creating a rhythmic component of his own. After a stirring rendition of "I'll Remember April," with pizzicato flourishes in the upper register, the pair slips subtly into "Old Folks" by allowing Pedersen to quote from a Mozart prelude before whispering their way through a ballad that is unusually muscular, knotty, and tight for a pair who just met. The date moves through fine material, each tune tighter and more adventurous than the least, from the swinging off-tempo read of "Stella By Starlight" to the set's closer, "Autumn Leaves." Pedersen plays the first two minutes of this gorgeous rendition solo, slowly, purposely stating the melody while investigating -- via a complex series of natural harmonics -- a new mode for the tune to be performed in. The sound on this set isn't the finest, but it's more than adequate if you're not an audiophile; nothing is lost, not a note, though some of the club's idiosyncratic nooks and crannies flatten it out a bit in places. It's a small complaint for a date that will no doubt go down in the jazz history of the Netherlands as a spontaneous meeting of two stellar talents who go head to head and come out on the other side as a unified team who encounter, challenge, and alter the music on which they cut their teeth, and enrich the listening audience in the meantime.