Evan Parker & George Lewis - From Saxophone & Trombone (1980)

This stunning collection of saxophone and trombone duos was recorded at the Art Workers' Guild in London by Adam Skeaping back in May 1980 and originally released on Incus, a label that Evan Parker ran jointly with guitarist Derek Bailey. The fact that there's no mention of this on this reissue on Parker's own PSI imprint testifies to the frosty relations that still exist between the two giants of improvised music. Fortunately, trombonist George Lewis has remained on good terms with both; in point of fact, it's hard to see how anyone could dislike Lewis if his rambunctious virtuosity and good-humored mastery of the trombone are anything to go by. He can take it up into soprano sax country or plunge it into the piano bottom octave register at will, pop, plop and crackle like a toyshop and go head to head with Parker's legendary circular breathing. Parker's early 1980s albums mark the boundary between his early, angular playing (traces of a jazz past are never far from the surface) and the awesome virtuosity of his later work, especially on soprano. The re-release of this album is cause for celebration indeed -- would that Lewis could use his good offices to negotiate a Parker / Bailey truce, and with it the reissue of their mythic and magnificent first Incus outing, The Topography of The Lungs.