Karen Borca / Paul Murphy: Entwined

Entwined pairs pioneering bassoonist Karen Borca with drummer Paul Murphy in an unadorned duet setting. It arrives hot on the heels of her leadership debut Good News Blues (NoBusiness, 2024). While the latter comprised archival concert tapes of sets from the 1998 and 2005 Vision Festivals, the former is an undated studio session which presents both in close detail. The seven cuts include four which were also featured on the live date and raise the possibility that this was recorded somewhere around the same time.

Although her discography remains slim, Borca possesses a weighty resume. A disciple of Cecil Taylor, she appeared in his collage ensembles at both Antioch and Wisconsin in the early 1970s. Through the pianist she also met alto saxophonist Jimmy Lyons, who became her life partner and frequent collaborator. Borca surfaces on many of his projects, including a date containing her composition "Good News Blues," later issued in The Box Set (Ayler, 2003) after Lyons' death in 1986. She has continued to perform in New York City since, albeit with a lower profile.

That same "Good News Blues" opens proceedings here. Like much of her repertoire, it revolves around an extended, intricately woven line, built from repeating motifs that recur as signposts throughout her improvisation. Borca's patient, architectural logic—an inheritance from Lyons—shapes the arc, avoiding extremes in favor of sustained development. Murphy's crisp accents and tonally varied pulse create a buoyant foundation, propelling the dialogue without binding it to an explicit meter.

Murphy, also a satellite in Lyons' orbit, contributes one piece, "Free," which retains Borca's structural sensibility and provokes an unaccompanied bassoon soliloquy that stands among the album's highlights. His playing shifts constantly in pitch and timbre, drawing vivid contrasts from a web of simultaneous rhythms. That command of tone also distinguishes "Space," the program's only fully-improvised track, where both musicians nonetheless generate form, while leaving air around their exchanges in keeping with the title.

Regardless of when the contents were waxed, Entwined offers one of the clearest portraits yet of Borca's richly granular sound. Even within a relatively narrow register, she spices phrases with urgent cries, clipped staccato bursts and flashes of color—elements that, alongside Murphy's inventive percussion, make this a focused and compelling addition to her small but significant recorded output.

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