#cipsela

So, maybe it’s handy to find points of reference outside of the composition vs. improvisation continuum when making sense of this music. Each musician has a distinctive voice, one that builds on early experiences and identifiable influences, but also expresses their personal attitude towards the enterprise of making music. Alongside the rudimentary brass repertoire that any schooled player learns when coming up, there’s a lot of Don Cherry in Vicente’s moments of fragility, some Lester Bowie in his ability to shift between sound effects and straighter sounds, and the sort of robust presence that you’re bound to pick up if you’re not inclined to be blown off the stage when you play with roughnecks like John Dikeman and Onno Govaert, or elder eminences like William Parker and Hamid Drake. Since dos Reis came to freer music through an outward-bound rock, one can hear his comfort with the tonal reach and timbral variety conferred by amplification and electronic effects, as well as the sharpened attention to other musicians’ expressive details that comes from playing in chamber-improv ensembles.

This attunement is something that the two players share, and it comes into play again and again throughout (Un)Prepared Pieces for Guitar and Trumpet. On “One Deer At A Car Window,” shivering, bowed guitar and whinnying, muted trumpet sway together, shifting infinitesimally closer, then pushing off from one another; these guys know how to have one another’s backs at the same time that they’re looking for their own way forward. They also share a respect for sturdy melodies, which they can plant and nurture in real time, as they do on the bold yet vulnerable “Grizzly Bear.” They don’t just play together; they speak a common language, fluently and accessibly.