When he worked in the 1970s as a sax sideman for world-jazz percussionist celebrity Chico Hamilton, Marc Copland (known as Marc Cohen in those days) had to play with rather more punch than on the recordings he has made as a pianist since the millennium. Copland swapped the piano for the sax after his Hamilton years, and though his leanings seem to be towards a contemplative post-Bill Evans music, he has never fallen under the spell of that style's famous exponents. His playing tends to the tranquil and oblique without sacrificing an expressive strength, and although a piano/guitar duo session is almost obliged to be muted, this dialogue with the delectably subtle guitarist John Abercrombie (an old associate from the Hamilton band) is full of languid surprises. Three originals from each of them are mixed with a couple of standards and an Ornette Coleman blues. Abercrombie's care with the softest phrase, and Copland's glistening sound and delicate dynamics, make the spontaneous partnership more important than the materials. Nonetheless, the pianist's title track has a wistful sway, If I Should Lose You edges warily towards its theme before lifting it into walking swing, and Coleman's Blues Connotation turns a brittle, stop-start improv into a dark, riffy groove. It's niche music for insiders, maybe, but very absorbing.
(John Fordham)
