Mike Gennaro / Alex Ward - Running For Trains

(confront collectors series ccs 93)

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***CD EDITION SOLD OUT***

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Alex Ward : clarinet & guitar

Mike Gennaro : drums

 

In November 2017, the duo of Canadian drummer Mike Gennaro and UK clarinettist/guitarist Alex Ward navigated its way across Germany by a series of train journeys of varied classifications and degrees-of-scenicness. Over the course of a week they played five duo shows, recordings from three of which appear on this album. Prior to this tour, Gennaro and Ward had played together only once, in an afternoon session in London captured on the digital-only release “Bring A Book”. When the opportunity to play together again finally arose, the musicians leapt into it with abandon, as can be heard on the opening track “Schönes Wochenende” which was the first piece of the first show of the tour. The recklessness that was perhaps ill-advised when running from platform to platform in search of the right train paid dividends in a musical context, as the players pushed their ideas and responses ever further. At the end of the week, the duo had several hours of recordings to show for their exertions, from which the pieces on this album have been lovingly cherry-picked: and with only one small undisplaced greater tuberosity fracture sustained in the process.