McCormack & Yarde Duo: Places and Other Spaces (UBU0045)
Only partnerships as exceptional as Andrew McCormack and Jason Yarde could undertake music like this, with its open structures and wide range of moods and textures. The compositions are by one or the other or both of them together, and the rapport is so close that where the composing leaves off and the improvisation begins is impossible to tell. Yarde, playing soprano and alto saxophones, is quite dazzling at times, and his tone blends superbly with McCormack's piano voicings. Jazz or classical, this is in a class of its own. --The Observer, October 2011
This album from pianist Andrew McCormack and saxophonist Jason Yarde is a super-sophisticated affair. --Daily Telegraph, October 2011 --Daily Telegraph, October 2011
When the conversation between pianist Andrew McCormack and saxist/composer Jason Yarde began on CD two years ago, the pair showed they could read and expand each other's thoughts with an impulsive empathy. The My Duo album's followup finds Yarde concentrating on soprano sax a little less, now applying a wider tonal range to a similar repertoire of seductively hooky, Keith Jarrett-like piano vamps embroidered by adventurous sax lines, swoony lyricism and minimalist sax-pattern whirlings reminiscent of Portico Quartet. McCormack is opulently classical on the arialike Spanish Princess, and in the rhythmically hypnotic territory of Jarrett or Brad Mehldau on the grooving D-Town, Antibes and Epilogue. Yarde's explorations of eerie sax harmonies and multiphonics enrich the pair's dreamy dance through The Spaces Before, and the complex Flowers for Japan, which opens with teasing two-note swaps, finds the saxophonist exploring solo soprano reveries reminiscent of John Surman, and McCormack unleashing a seamlessly beautiful piano improvisation. It might be a limited format, but these two keep uncovering jewels within it. --The Guardian
Pianist Andrew McCormack and saxophonist Jason Yarde s acclaimed 2009 debut ( My Duo ) showed a unique meeting of minds. Their new CD is even better. Apart from superbly improvised interplay, it s distinguished by the quality and diversity of their compositions. Full of character, they range from the knotty tartness of Dark Too Bright and Hill Walking on Tynerside , to the sheer beauty of Spanish Princess and Flowers for Japan , to the quirkily boppish D-Town and the pensive, atmospheric Epilogue and Other Spaces . Every performance, including the sole standard (a marvellously re-thought Embraceable You ), combines formal elegance and lyric passion. Throughout, McCormack accompanies Yarde s passionate, lemony eloquence on soprano or alto with uncanny prescience, while both solo with a composer s sense of structure and contrast. FIVE STARS --Irish Times
