Mary Flower And Leon Cotter: Chants of Rain

Musicians with genuine camaraderie share a special pleasure when playing together. And the joy deepens when the musicianship is unimpeded by intrusions on stage or in the studio. The collaboration of finger-picking guitarist Mary Flower and clarinetist Leon Cotter, Chants of Rain, is just one of those ultra-rare instances of mutual delight. 

In eleven tracks running forty-plus minutes, the pair exhibit their kindred spirits in ways large and small on original material that would seem to have sprung straight from a set of their own spontaneous interactions. For instance, on "Mary's Rag," the duo stakes out its stylistic territory sans any self-consciousness about their deep and abiding familiarity with blues, jazz and rootsy New Orleans music.

Such numbers as that opening and "Dauphine" are suffused with infectious gaiety. "Trip Around The Sun" is a bit more contemplative, but the guitarist Flower's harmonics add sonority to those moments. Still, such interludes are hardly much sweeter than the sinuous horn lines from Cotter accompanying them.

There is never a sense of hurry as this duo lay out, then  embroider upon, the various motifs within cuts such as "Half Moon." Cotter and Flower are no doubt sufficiently confident of their bond, not to mention their individual command of technique, to proceed through such performances and the title song with nary a hint of hesitation. Their arrangements are not just a collection of wordless sentences, but fully- developed paragraphs of instrumental expression(s).

Accordingly, it is something of a surprise that no track here is longer than "Strawberry Lane"'s 4:38 duration. But Flower and Cotter neither overplay an excess of notes nor waste them, so it only makes sense that their natural tendency is to abide by the 'less is more' tenet. 

Yet, in playing so pithily, the pair so often sound like more than just two musicians. As is the case on "Eagle Creek Bounce," however, there is no overdubbing, just one more instance of self-discipline rendered clean and clear through the recordings by Everett Moran, mixed by Bob Stark, then mastered by J. J. Golden. Production by the artists themselves only makes sense, but is nonetheless not a virtue to be taken for granted: comparably (or even greater) creative minds might well succumb to the lapses of self-indulgence wholly absent here.

Consequently, it is such an unmitigated pleasure to follow the unfolding of a performance such as "Eve of the Eve." The seamless continuity between individual cuts and their surroundings conjures up the sensation of an extended passage of pure rhapsody. No doubt Flower and Cotter experienced these same intervals as an elongated moment of unsullied inspiration.