Michael Mantler's conceptual thinking is here encapsulated in music for two. These concise duets continue his basic concept of creating music that is in part completely notated, but also involves improvisation. With only two instruments, the piano represents Mantler's essentially orchestral concept with a soloist from contemporary new music (Per Salo, a classical non-improvising pianist), combined with a second player coming from jazz (guitarist Bjarne Roup�, improvising/freely interpreting).
Mantler (born 1943 in Vienna) has explored the relationship of composition and improvisation as rigorously as any musician in jazz. After playing, mid-1960s, with some of the great innovators of progressive jazz, including Cecil Taylor, Mantler co-founded the Jazz Composer's Orchestra to find forms for creatively channelling the improvisational impulse. In most of his work since then, including a distinguished series of recordings for JCOA, WATT and ECM, he has looked at the ways in which notated music and improvising can inform or complement each other.
Swedish guitarist Bjarne Roup�, now based in Copenhagen, is an immensely experienced musician who has performed and recorded with a multitude of international musicians and groups: Palle Mikkelborg and Miles Davis (Aura), The Danish Radio Big Band, Marilyn Mazur, Dizzy Gillespie, Bob Brookmeyer, Jimmy Smith, Toots Thielemans, Hermeto Pascoal, Clark Terry, Van Morrison, Georgie Fame, Art Farmer, and many others. He participated in Mantler's albums Cerco Un Paese Innocente, School of Understanding, Songs and One Symphony, Hide and Seek and most recently was soloist on his Guitar Concerto on the widely-praised Concertos for ECM.
Danish pianist Per Salo studied in Denmark, Italy and the USA, and is very active both as a soloist and chamber musician. Recently he appeared as a soloist in Olivier Messiaen's Turangal�la Symphony in Germany and Denmark. In 1997 Chandos released Per Salo's recording of Per N�rgaard's Concerto in Due Tempi, which he premiered with the Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra when the composer was awarded the L�onie Sonning Music Prize. Salo has previously collaborated with Michael Mantler on his CD Hide and Seek.
Personnel: Bjarne Roup� (guitars), Per Salo (piano)
