Duologues

Most of guitarist Jim Hall’s duo albums stay fairly close to the jazz mainstream. This one, on which he teams up with pianist Enrico Pieranunzi, is a bit of an outlier. The music they make together isn’t exactly “outside” (as the jazz cats say), but some of it is pretty spiky and some of the change-ups are startling — check the transition from the angular “Carefull” [sic] to the sweetly balladic “From E. to C.,” for example. The tracks titled “Duologue” seem to be duo improvisations; everything sounds like a spirited and friendly conversation.