Cuneiform's issue of a double-disc of completely unheard recordings by Steve Lacy and Roswell Rudd is certainly a welcome addition to the catalog. Lacy and Rudd played together in one the pair's earliest Dixieland outings in the '50s and eventually formed the great free bop quartet and issued the brilliant School Days album in 1963 that was re-released by Hat. This double-disc presents nine tunes by the pair recorded between 1999 and 2002, and four demo cuts for the School Days band with drummer Denis Charles and bassist Bob Cunningham. The rest feature John Betsch on drums and Jean-Jacques Avenel on bass. The sound on these recordings is very good to excellent, while the vast majority were recorded in festival situations. While the music ranges from swinging out jazz to more free but not obnoxious offerings, the particular interest is in the demo sides cut for School Days in the studio. The interplay between the frontline players is completely symbiotic and swinging, and features two takes of Thelonious Monk's Eronel -- both of which take different approaches -- Monk's Think of One, and Tune 2 by Cecil Taylor. The small and deliberate chances taken with forms and cadences here is revelatory in how Lacy developed his approach to playing the music of Monk in an ensemble setting that fit him far more closely. What's remarkable, though, is the Taylor track, which moves along a traditional headline as tempo and cadences change. Tune 2, written along a blues line, moves in three directions at once: rhythmically harmonically and improvisationally. Lacy's soloing here is interesting, even compelling on the Taylor tune, but Rudd's is out of this world. He takes a real authority with the material in the front seat. It's almost worth the price of the double-disc for these demos alone, which total about 24 minutes. This is not to deny the wealth and even the grandeur of the rest of what's here. These are festival performances and as such, the quartet's collective spirit is buoyed by appreciative audiences.

1		The Rent
2		The Bath
3		The Hoot
4		Blinks
5		Light Blue
6		Bookioni
7		Bamako
8		Twelve Bars
9		Bone
10		Eronel [Take 2]
11		Tune 2
12		Think of One
13		Eronel [Take 3]

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