Secret Keeper has served as a collective sobriquet for bassist Stephen Crump and guitarist Mary Halvorson’s musical activities together for the last several years. Independently, the two remain among the busiest New York-based improvisors in the business. Crump holds a standing post in pianist Vijay Iyer’s trio and was a founding member of the Rosetta Trio with guitarists Liberty Ellman and Jamie Fox. Halvorson’s credits continue to accumulate at a near-exponential rate under her leadership and in the company of regular associates like Tom Rainey, Ingrid Laubrock and Marc Ribot. Both musicians are experienced in the art of spontaneous dialogue, a shared affinity that found a wider audience in the spring of 2013 via Super 8, their first record together and a thoroughly improvised affair.
Emerge continues the conversation where the pair left off, but this time in a decidedly more tuneful and composed direction developed in part through a series of concert performances undertaken in the interim. They begin with a rendering of Irving Berlin’s “What’ll I Do” with Halvorson torquing the pitch of her strings like sorghum taffy to keep things from sounding too circumspect. That extreme malleability can sometimes be disorienting as during her dizzying lead on “A Muddle of Hope”, but Halvorson dials down the effect in service of the melody when needed. Crump’s sound is more consistently conventional by comparison, a ripe, woody, resonant boom when plucking and a precise, glissando-rich texturing when brandishing bow. The pieces here may conform closer to the parameters of discrete compositions, but carefully parceled space and silence are just as important to the proceedings.
Documented in Crump’s home studio, the music radiates both immediacy and intimacy. On the Berlin-penned ballad the gentle percussion of rainfall is clearly audible in the background as environmental accompaniment. Four pieces from each of the musicians follow in an interspersed sequence. Sudden stops and slight miscues are discernable on occasion in the interplay, but rather than being redacted by Crump in the post-recording mix they remain indelible parts of the performance. Each player gives over to preserving a personalized sound throughout, Halvorson pulling a variety of warble-etched progressions from her Guild hollow body and Crump releasing thick, rhythm-infused ribbons around her. A loping elastic groove that materializes on the tail-end of the title piece signals a thematic about-face and they even find the occasion to rock out as on the vapor-trail tangled freakout that erupts in the final minutes of “Turns to White Gold”. Different still, the tinkling timbral icicles that coalesce at end of “Erie” touch on the sublime.
