Petra Haller and Meg Morley: Shoulders I Stand On

Shoulders I Stand On is a duo album, but not a typical one. It is a recording which combines piano with tap dance, the interplay creating a soundscape that is both original and fascinating.

Meg Morley, an Australian musician based in London, is an experienced and skilled accompanist who has played for silent movies and for dance ensembles including Ballet Rambert. Morley has also released a couple of trio albums, 2017's Can't Get Started and 2022's Journey Through Home as well as a solo EP, Through the Hours, her debut recording from 2017. Haller, also based in London but originally from Germany, has been a professional dancer for some years and describes herself as an independent dance artist and tap dancer. She has performed at London's Vortex and in 2020 she became the first dancer named by Jazzwise magazine as a Rising Jazz Artist.

The pair have been collaborating since 2019, playing improvisations at venues across the UK, and recording Shoulders I Stand On, at Ocean Sound Studios in Giske, on Norway's Atlantic coast, in 2022. It is a mix of composed and improvised pieces—"Song of the Birds" is based on a traditional Catalan song, "El Cant dels Ocells." As may be expected of a piano & tap dance duo, the sound they make can be described as "percussive," but this simplistic description belies the range of tones and moods which Haller and Morley conjure across the album's nine tracks.

Morley opens "Call of the Birds" with gentle, spacious and delicate piano and it's something of a shock when Haller comes in, first with a light shuffle then with a flurry of taps like hailstones on a tin roof. At first, this strange juxtaposition of sounds soon becomes more familiar on repeated plays, but never to the point where it loses its ability to surprise the unwary listener. When both Morley and Haller hit hard, striking keys and feet with genuine power— on sections of "Thicker than Blood," for example—there is a palpable tension at play. Elsewhere, there are passages which are almost humorous, the two performers trading phrases or ideas as if in (friendly) competition. On "Forever and a Day" Morley's playing is at its loveliest, with Haller's quickfire taps responding to the piano's unexpected shifts in melody and rhythm. "Fearless" encapsulates much of the duo's full range of sound. It opens with a sprightly waltz-time section then explodes into a burst of urgent, powerful, music and dance before closing with a minute or so of solo tap.

Jazz records featuring tap dance are thin on the ground; although Fred Astaire did record a few numbers with the Oscar Petersen Quartet in the '50s, and Derek Bailey and Will Gaines recorded together in the '90s they hardly opened the floodgates. Shoulders I Stand On is such a lively, engaging and original record that it makes one wonder why those floodgates didn't open as widely as they could.