Misha Mengelberg / Sabu Toyozumi: The Analects Of Confucius

As the reputations of Japanese free players grew during the 1970s, they lured a procession of Europeans and Americans eager to collaborate, among them Steve Lacy, Peter Brötzmann, Derek Bailey, and John Zorn. Dutch pianist Misha Mengelberg also made the journey, first with the Instant Composers Pool (ICP) in 1982 and later independently. One of the most frequent partners awaiting visiting musicians was drummer Sabu Toyozumi. A 1994 meeting yielded The Untrammeled Traveller (Chap Chap, 2013); The Analects Of Confucius, a previously unreleased 2000 live performance, now deepens the record of their relationship.

Mengelberg, a sparkplug composer and bandleader who co-founded the ICP, was an early champion of Thelonious Monk and Herbie Nichols and famously played on Eric Dolphy's last recording. He was also influenced by Fluxus, a radical experimental arts movement, one of whose dictums was that the process of creating was privileged over the finished product. That ties in with the pianist's sometimes subversive approach, which positively embraces digressions and detours, alongside sideways glances at the American Songbook. Everything was grist to the mill of this perennially inquisitive improviser.

A curious traveler himself, Toyozumi roved across North America and Europe, even becoming the only non-African American member of Chicago's AACM for a short while. His familiarity with Western tropes ensured that while he rarely aped convention, when he so desired he could swing and impart locomotive momentum with the best. Even so for much of the concert presented here he establishes a parallel current, his energy levels and placement of sound ever attuned to Mengelberg's shifts in pace, density and direction, but all filtered through his own internal logic.

Of course the responsiveness cut both ways. On the lengthy episodic opener "My Guru MM" conversational dialogue gives way to an extended drum exposition, clipped staccato exchanges, passages of near silence and a crescendo initiated by Toyozumi, after which they return to the spacious fragmented territory of the start. Partway through "Teremakashi To Forest Of Keyagu," the pianist's playful classicism draw martial cadences from the drummer, leading the piece into a sort of oompah march. Similar provocations enliven a short concluding excursion into Monk's "Off Minor," where Toyozumi's kick drum throb and cymbal clashes adroitly avoid the obvious. Highlight of the disc, however, is Mengelberg's solo rendition of "Song For Amy"—one man in heartfelt communion with himself.

Ultimately it is not the novelty of encounter that lingers, but the sense of two restless intelligences circling one another, content to leave questions unresolved.