Robbie Lee and Mary Halvorson: Seed Triangular
New Amsterdam Records

It's been quite a year for the ever-intrepid Mary Halvorson. Her critically lauded Code Girl saw the NYC-based guitarist boldly branching out into vocal song-based territory, which she then followed with not one but two related albums, Ours and Theirs, with Thumbscrew partners Michael Formanek and Tomas Fujiwara. Now we have Seed Triangular, a collaboration with multi-instrumentalist Robbie Lee wholly that offers resounding further evidence of her explorative artistic sensibility.

The back photo on the physical package makes clear that the fifteen-track release is a rather different animal from anything else she's issued. In place of the more conventional-looking 1930 Gibson L-2 guitar, Halvorson's cradling an eighteen-string Knutsen harp guitar, its straight and curved necks jutting out from its large body; further to that, the album's semi-edited improvisations document her playing some of the album's instruments for the very first time. Supplementing those axes, she also plays an 1888 SS Stewart six-string banjo, while partner-in-crime Lee's credited with baroque flutes, an eight-key flute, chalumeau (Renaissance clarinet), soprillo saxophone (the world's smallest, apparently), melodica, and (on “Early Willows”) antique sleigh bells. Such a variety makes Seed Triangular an engaging listen on sonic grounds alone.

There's a relaxed and comfortable vibe to the recording that's in part attributable to the duo's personal history. Though they've never performed together professionally, they've been improv buddies for more than a decade, and in typical fashion Seed Triangular emerged serendipitously out of a casual jam session at Studio Drewtube in Brooklyn. The titles of the fifteen pieces, by the way, were derived by Lee from his fourteen-volume set of Thoreau's journals.

Seed Triangular locates itself within a genre-transcending realm that suggests ties to early music, folk, free jazz, and classical without pledging allegiance to any one in particular. Formal compositional structures are absent, but the engrossing interplay more than compensates. The contrasts in timbre between their respective instruments also adds to the album's appeal, especially when in certain cases the sound presented is so unusual. During “A Forest Viol,” for example, Lee's melodica in places resembles a hurdy-gurdy, while the pairing of soprillo sax and gut-stringed banjo in the rambunctious “Rock Flowers” is a combination you'll probably never hear anywhere else. It's a duets set in the truest sense, with the players exemplifying responsive listening from start to finish, the rapid interplay between her Gibson and his baroque flute during both “Pondeteria” and “The Tawny Orange” prime illustrations. There are frenetic episodes, but restrained ones, too, as shown by “Spring Up There,” a relatively peaceful setting for eight-key flute and Gibson.

October 2018