When Sonny Rollins plays alone, you can still hear the band behind him. In breath and energy, he communicates with musicians who sit silent; in time, he dances on top of a groove he feels sure is there. This is how most horn players (who can play notes and harmonics but never full-on chords) approach solo performance and often even duets. Most horn players. Not Daniel Carter.
Carter spends all of his energy finding an aural center of gravity and sticking to it. Even when he switches between alto, tenor, trumpet, clarinet and flute, the calm center remains the same. And it's not that he doesn't listen, but rather that there just isn't much neck-turning going on. He knows where he is, and he plays and reacts accordingly.
On Luminescence, a series of duets with bassist Reuben Radding, Carter is in possession only of his alto. Stripped down like this to the bare essentials, Carter's poise shows. He lets notes sustain without much vibrato or force, and he blows flurries of notes without drowning Radding's somber harmonics. Radding, for his part, plays with a similar confidence, and wisely tunes into Carter's energy. He doesn't try to make the bass anything it's not, and revels in the lower register.
Recorded on two dates, one live and one in the studio, the tunes are improvisatory in their tendency to pick up new ideas and forget about the old. But the musicians play them with a solid attention span, not feeling the need to rifle through ideas as quickly as they come. There is comfort here. And space, space that Carter and Radding have left for the pieces to breathe, not for musicians who aren't playing.
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