Roger and Me

I got together a couple weeks ago with Swedish guitarist Roger Tallroth to start work on our duo album. It was a great couple days of rehearsing and getting to know each other's playing better and it ended with a few recorded sketches, which will be fleshed out, added to, and finalized some time in 2008. It'll mostly be original tunes--mine and Roger's, and should be quite interesting. I'm very excited about it. We sort of fell into a natural role of Roger as accompanist and me as melody player. But that designation doesn't begin to describe what's going on. Roger completely reinvents the idea of accompanist. Everything is fair game for variation when he plays, and he slides in and out of harmonies, counterpoint, and polyrhythms with incredible ease. I often found myself holding on for dear life, just trying to play the melody to a couple of his polskas. We had about a half hour of daylight left for a few pictures on the top of Bernal Heights. Anne Hamersky is the photographer, of course.

Photos: (c) 2007, Anne Hamersky, www.annehamersky.com