Master jazz soloists Ted Daniel and Michael Marcus, who compose the jazz duet Duology, will be joined by bassist Dan Lutz and drummer Lorca Hart for an evening of music on Tuesday, Feb. 13 at the Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum. The public portion of the program begins at 6:45 p.m. and is free, with seating on a first-come basis.
Daniel, on trumpet, and Marcus, a reeds instrumentalist, formed Duology in 2006, collaborating to express their music in unique terms, andas a consequencenot utilize repetitive, borrowed or routine expressions that may now be familiar to jazz listeners.
"(Jazz is) not about new is different'," notes professional musician, jazz scholar and educator Billy Taylor, who leads the Jazz in July program at the University of Massachusetts, where he is the Wilmer D. Barrett Professor of Music. "Jazz is like a language. You don't speak in the same way that your parents spoke. It's the same language, but you speak it in your way."
As a duet, Daniel and Marcus face a challenge that might go unnoticed by the average listener. "We don't have a drum to keep time, nor do we have a bass to play the chords out," Daniel says. "What that does is make one listen to the other person very intently."
For their Athenaeum performance, Duology will be joined by bassist Dan Lutz and drummer Lorca Hart, delivering a snapshot of jazz history that reaches from Dixieland to free-abstraction.