(1995) Max Roach/Mal Waldron - Explorations... to the Mth Degree ***1/2

 

With: Mal Waldron (piano), Max Roach (drums)

Record date: September 20, 1995

During his 70th birthday tour Mal had a couple of concerts in his then country of residence: Belgium. He performed multiple nights in ‘de Singer’, in the city of Antwerp with very interesting line ups. There was a quartet with Steve Lacy, Reggie Workman and Andrew Cyrille. A duet with Jeanne Lee and also one with... Max Roach. I’m pretty sure everything was recorded but only the set with Max was released. Another thing I am almost sure of is that the amazing Mal Waldron documentary by Tom van Overberghe called ‘Portrait of Mal’ was recorded during these days. It was released 2 years later. If you haven’t seen it: it’s on YouTube and is highly recommended. 

 

Back on this record then. Now, Max and Mal went way back of course. They played on several occasions with each other: as sidemen in Mingus’ band but of course Mal made some appearances on some classic Roach albums like ‘Percussion, Bitter Sweet’ and ‘It’s Time’. They remained friends afterwards but did not make a record together until this one. And it’s a pretty good one.

 

It’s a free form suite that really goes like pretty much in every possible direction. Largely improvised in the spot, it’s a show off in perfect interplay. And it might have been a long time ago since they had played together: the magic is still there. They still communicate with each other like they have played together all of their life. Sometimes it’s Mal who takes the lead, then it’s Max again and sometimes it’s both of them at once. But they never try to overrule the other. And sometimes the music is structured while at other times it’s really more a freely improvised soundscape. 

 

The whole record is one with two leaders. There’s some solo space for Mal, including a lovely version of the beautiful Free for C.T. But also some excellent soloing by Max Roach. Roach’s gentle style of drumming fits perfectly with Mal’s percussive style of drumming. Every bar he drums is different but he doesn’t play out of time for a second. Sometimes you have these very dominant and loud drummers: Max is really quite the opposite. But that doesn’t mean he is boring or just only plays straight ahead. It’s just like with his group with Billy Harper and Cecil Bridgewater where he gave the music such energy without being in the center all the time.

 

Just like the piano/drum duos with Takeo Moriyama, this is recommended music. You don’t really miss a bass player as Mal provides quite a lot of bass with his low register playing. It’s a fascinating dialogue by two great musicians. It’s also music for focused listening as there’s happening a lot but that is not always immediate to be recognized. It’s probably a bit too much listening the whole two hours without a break but the music lends itself to be partitioned in two parts.

 

It was released by George Haslam’s SLAM label. So don’t expect to much of the packaging but the music is great and so is the audio quality. The cd’s mostly go for under 10 euros. That’s not a lot of money for 2 hours of great music.