Barney Wilen & Alain Jean-Mari - Montr�al Duets (2CD)

Two of France's most esteemed jazz musicians, saxophonist Barney Wilen and pianist Alain Jean-Marie, recorded live as a duo at the 1993 Montreal Jazz Festival. This 2CD limited edition includes a 20-page booklet with essays by renowned jazz writers Pascal Anquetil (Jazz Magazine) and Brian Mortan (Penguin Guide To Jazz).

Released from the archives for the very first time, the concerts were recorded just three years before Barney Wilen sadly passed away at just 59. Among the highlights of his career was his collaboration with Miles Davis on the Lift To The Scaffold (Ascenseur pour L'echafaud) soundtrack.

Wilen's preferred piano partner, for much of his later career, was the Martinique-born Alain Jean-Marie. He appears on both La Note Bleue and Wild Dogs of the Ruwenzori, but the duo's Montr�al appearance in 1993 is a nice way to study their chemistry at some length. - Brian Morton

The alchemy of a duo cannot be decreed. It can be verified by the heat of this exchange. The Montreal concert is living proof. With these two musicians, jazz is not a matter of tempo or repertoire, of structures or the number of notes played in each bar. It is above all a matter of breathing, of the punctuation of each phrase, of the courtesy toward silence, a matter of music itself. - Pascal Anquetil