Steve Barry & Judy Bailey - Elements (2020) [Hi-Res]

This album of contemporary piano music for two pianos is an entirely improvised set of pieces featuring two of Australasia’s most fearless and adventurous musicians. Recorded live in a one-set, entirely improvised concert at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in August 2018, Elements encapsulates the humour, vitality, and intuitive, empathetic communication and creative spirit of a now-longstanding musical partnership. Since a debut duo performance in 2011 following Barry’s undergraduate studies with Bailey in the Conservatorium’s jazz program, annual revisitings in concert have seen the emergence of a unique improvisatory telepathy both in the moment-to-moment musical choices and the broader arcs of each set.

Expat New Zealand pianist Barry studied under the exceptional Australia Bailey when he attended Sydney's Conservatorium of Music (where Mike Nock also taught) on a jazz course and almost immediately discovered they had a mutual understanding when it came to live improvisation.

Barry called it “telepathy” and this session recorded live in August 2018 confirms that.

The album title refers to time as much as the five elements (pieces here include Magma, Tane-Rore, The Dinosaur Plod, Maelstrom, New Dawn and at the end The Forest Sleeps).

So there an exploratory, evocative thread binding the nine pieces which are by turns brooding (the short opener Magma), dreamlike as atoms and molecules draw together (Exordium), playful (Fairy Goblins' Dance), muscular (Dinosaur Plod) and busy (the three minute Maelstrom, of course).

Often with demanding, improvised music we say that this music is not for everyone (or some other similar consumer warning).

But while this by description – solo pianos, free improvisation – might seem to require that counsel, that isn't the case here.

This is highly approachable, utterly engaging, sounds like the music for a contemporary dance production (shut your eyes) and is never so far out that you don't feel it will come back.

Take the journey through time and the mind.

Steve Barry, piano
Judy Bailey, piano

Produced by Steve Barry and Judy Bailey
Recorded by Ross A’hern at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, 8th August 2018
Mixed by Ross A’hern
Mastered by Steve Garden

Tracklist:
01. Steve Barry & Judy Bailey - Magma (1:23)
02. Steve Barry & Judy Bailey - Exordium (2:39)
03. Steve Barry & Judy Bailey - Fairy Goblins' Dance (3:38)
04. Steve Barry & Judy Bailey - The Witching Hour (8:17)
05. Steve Barry & Judy Bailey - Tane-Rore (4:47)
06. Steve Barry & Judy Bailey - The Dinosaur Plod (9:51)
07. Steve Barry & Judy Bailey - Maelstrom (3:10)
08. Steve Barry & Judy Bailey - New Dawn (7:30)
09. Steve Barry & Judy Bailey - The Forest Sleeps (1:31)