With Affinities in 2011, the partnership of former Anthony Braxton players Marilyn Crispell (piano) and Gerry Hemingway (drums) produced improv-duo music of power, precision and lyricism. Table of Changes is another live album, drawn from four dates on their 2013 European tour. The tracks are all originals, highlighting the players’ emotional as well as technical range, with the only cover being Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye – interpreted in solemn, spacey chords and percussion tapestries until the melody coalesces at the end. Crispell’s strength, decisiveness and energy often surface in the turbulent chordwork that rolls and rings against Hemingway’s needling cymbal sounds and pummelling drums, but she’s as likely to float glistening treble tones over the drummer’s vibraphone glow or the pings of finger-cymbals. The dreamy and then darkening Night Passing focuses on Crispell’s use of space and harmonic sophistication; Hemingway’s rubbed-metal sounds and ghostly nasal singing emphasise the title implications of Windy City while Crispell rhapsodises classically. It’s an uncannily attuned partnership.
