The musicians and longtime friends discuss their Covid-era solo projects, the endless gifts of the Thelonious Monk songbook, and the challenges of building a community for improvised music in a new city.

Guitarist Jeff Parker and reedist Chris Speed first met in the late 1980s when they were both students in Boston-Parker at Berklee, and Speed at New England Conservatory. In the years since, they've each taken circuitous routes in music, parlaying their broad sensibilities and creative curiosity into many disparate projects. Parker moved to Chicago, where he joined the instrumental rock band Tortoise and began a long-time collaboration with cornetist Rob Mazurek in various incarnations of the Chicago Underground Quartet and Isotope 217. Since 1995, he's been a member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), where he spent years playing in Ernest Dawkin's New Horizons Ensemble. His long and diverse list of collaborations also includes work alongside Fred Anderson, Joshua Redman, Brian Blade, Matana Roberts, and Nicole Mitchell, among many others. More recently, sled his own band The New Breed, where his skills as an electronic music producer are on full display. Speed settled in New York, working in collectives like Human Feel, with Kurt Rosenwinkel, Jim Black, and Andrew D'Angelo, John Hollenbeck's Claudia Quartet; the Balkan-flavored quartet quarter Pachora; and his own idiosyncratic quartet Yeah NO, which borrowed ideas from electronic music and minimalism. In 2014, he assembled an agile, history-informed trio with Dave King and Chris Tordini, and this past fall he joined The Bad Plus-where, along with guitarist Ben Monder, he's helping to remake the veteran piano trio into something new and entirely unexpected.

Both musicians are based in Los Angeles and recently released solo records made during the pandemic. They spoke over Zoom in November 2021.

Jeff Parker: I had your solo CD playing on repeat in the car for a month. I really enjoyed it, man. That's kind of a cool thing about the lockdown period-there were so many bedroom records and solo projects that people got into over this strange time... a lot of very reflective music, you know?

Chris Speed: I was inspired by your solo record that came out before the pandemic [Parker's 2016 allbum Slight Freedom). It has such great ambience, and such great moods that you made for each one of those pieces. wondering what sort of prep went into that.

JP: That record came about when I first moved to LA. I didn't know anybody. I rented a practice space. Lee Anne [Schmitt] had a friend who was in a weekend warrior rock band, and they rented this rehearsal space in Highland Park, and I gave him a hundred bucks a month. I would go and use the space in the day when they weren't in. I just went in there and I had my amp and my looping pedal-all my stuff was still in Chicago, mostly. I went there and I would practice and work on stuff during the day and I ended up coming up with a repertoire of stuff. It was hard to do, man. The music wasn't hard to do, but it hard to figure out a solo thing. Most of it came from listening to Monk and Steve Lacy and Sonny Rollins, who are all virtuosos. I just finished another solo guitar record. It's just me and my pedal board.

CS: I guess we all think about making solo records. I was just never thinking about it enough to actually get it done. But Covid, and having that time alone, definitely inspired me to actually follow through with it. I think all of us were dealing with a lot of, if not solo work, at least going through the process of working alone. We couldn't play together. A lot of us went through a sort of self-reflection. I just needed to push through and document it and, for me, it was interesting just to have the on the actual instrument. It started with me just trying to releam the clarinet and trying to find some inspiration. I thought, I guess there's certain elements of the instrument that I want to address-blind spots-or just things I want to work on, and now I have the time and the con-centration to be able to do that. I don't know how it is for you, Jeff, but sometimes I get a little unfocused if there's too many things to learn or other bands to worry about. During Covid, there was none of that. It was just like, okay, I guess I can work on this.

JP: Yeah, I get like that, too. To be honest, I've been focusing on making my own music for the last few years. I never really had the physical space to do that until I moved out here. For one, I s kind of isolated from a I community of musicians; and two, I finally had these kinds of rehearsal spaces at my disposal For me, especially with the guitar, you think solo guitar, you think Joe Pass, Ted Green-these super virtuosic, really intricate, floral arrangements. The stuff that gave me the confidence to do it was the Steve Lacy solo stuff. Sonny Rollins has done some solo pieces. And, of course, Monk. All three of those guys are super...

Featuring Chris Speed on solo clarinet, recorded in San Diego in October of 2020.

Although Chris Speed is well known as a tenor saxist who has worked with Tim Berne in Bloodcount (starting in the early 1990's), Pachora (with Jim Black & Skuli Sverrison) and the Claudia Quintet, over time Mr. Speed has been doubling on clarinet for a long time as well. I don't think that Mr. Speed has made a recording where he just plays clarinet until now and solo clarinet recordings are rather rare. For this disc Mr. Speed composed 6 of the nine tracks with diverse covers by Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, Julius Hemphill and Paul Motian plus two covers from former bandmates: Hilmar Jensson (in Tyft) & Skuli S. (from Pachora).

The first thing I noticed about this disc is this: Mr. Speed has a wonderful, warm expressive tone on clarinet and this disc is superbly recorded, dry yet just right. The opening song is also the title track, "Light Line" and it is also a tour-de-force with Mr. Speed showing off his lush tone with layers of circular streams interwoven in a delightful tapestry. The piece sounds like a madrigal with several lines spinning at the same time. Since Mr. Speed is playing solo throughout this disc, he often takes the melody and then embellishes by weaving different lines around the central theme. Speed keeps each piece pretty short, mostly under 4 minutes each. Two highlights include "Miss Ann" by Eric Dolphy (from the first jazz record I ever bought in late 1972) and Julius Hemphill's "Rites" (from his classic 'Dogon A.D.' album). Each piece seems to tell a different story or at least set a different scene or vibe. What I find most interesting here is the way all of these songs fit together into a suite-like connection. Speed plays what sounds like an older classical piece called, "La Rosita Arribena", which brings this disc into another related world. I can't recall very many covers of John Coltrane's "Sun Ship" but we do get a spirited version on this disc.
The last piece is called, "It Should've Happened Long Ago" by Paul Motian.
The piece is rather solemn and a nice way to bring this mighty fine disc to an end.