Duets presents Greg Mills in the role of an accompanist. The Cd notes say this about him: Beware of Mr. Mills; he can never be taken for granted! The music here is significantly different than his compositionally weighty solo performances or his intricate group improvisations. The 17 pieces on this Cd comprise a panorama of experience in style mood texture & musical vocabulary building on the fluid yet secure foundation of Mills' improvisational playing. The piano's role varies from piece to piece sometimes providing supportive accompaniment at other times engaging in a dialogue of equals. In some pieces Mills is provocative, challenging his partner to move beyond expectations, in others he plays the willing passenger, riding shotgun. In spite of his technical & imaginative skills, Mills never steals a step on his partner of the moment, never upstages even when pushing the improv beyond the inevitable. Like any great conversationalist, he has things to say and says them in his own engaging & genuine voice but more importantly, he knows how to listen and brings an almost psychic anticipation to the moment. And while his compositional abilities help bring a solidity of form to these pieces, careful listening reveals that just as often it is his partner who provides the conception and direction of the dialogue. These conversations are made complete by a group of virtuoso players. In concert with Mills they weave a fabric that is intimate yet open, diverse and surprising. Andreotti, Stone, Claude & Tompkins are all solid performers deeply rooted in the various conventions of their respective instruments. However it is their use of the unconventional in extended technique, unusual voices and very savvy imaginative & intuitive choices that make these duets spark and crackle with electric creativity. JZ Meet The Artists Tracy Andreotti is currently principal cellist in both of St. Louis' opera companies and has over the years played with numerous string quartets, ensembles and orchestras. She is also a seasoned improviser, co-founding the ongoing Experimental Art Night series, serving a ten year stint with free improv trio Kierkegaard Youth, and most recently leading her own group, The Vernacular String Trio. Henry Claude has been a regularly engaged percussionist with the St Louis Symphony Orchestra for thirty years. He founded and was director for twenty-five years of the the Nuclear Percussion Ensemble. Reed-man Dave Stone is a working Jazz musician whose award winning trio is in its twentieth year of performance. He devotes equal time to various free improv/free jazz groups, most notably The Dave Stone Ensemble. Fred Tompkins is a composer, classically trained and strongly influence by modern jazz having played in jazz groups for many years. He improvises on bass and soprano flute and is currently affiliated with Greg Mills' Perihelion Ensemble as are the other musicians on this Cd. Trained as a classical pianist, Mills' decades-spanning performance history has been devoted exclusively to improvised music and while emphasizing solo piano has also included such seminal groups as The Human Arts Ensemble and Exiles. Andreotti and Mills co-founded The Perihelion Quartet in 2015. Some reviews of his past solo works: As it happens, this afternoon I picked up randomly from the enormous pile of last year's records that are still waiting for a review, retrieving a couple of absolute gems in the process. Freedonia is run by Jay Zelenka, who in August (of 2008…) had sent me a letter which described the artistic intentions of this "micro-label": "to promote contemporary musical endeavours and to preserve vintage recordings that are out of print or were never released". Together with the missive there were two CDs by pianist Greg Mills who — like all musicians involved with this imprint — is based in St. Louis, the "geographic unifying factor" of the enterprise. Mills is a technically gifted architect of the Steinway, a classical grounding manifest since the first moment one hears him playing; these are the only works published under his name to date. Esfoma was originally conceived in 1984 yet it sounds unmarked by the passage of time and totally gratifying, characterized as it is by a kind of passionate expressiveness corroborated by digital nimbleness and thoughtful artistry. This is the album that probably will satisfy the listeners who want to enjoy more harmonic content and less experimentation (although rarely the man leaves us without a serious attempt to transcend the barriers of genres). The composer/improviser himself lists the influences that lie behind these five pieces: Charles Ives, Cecil Taylor, Indian raga, 20th century European serialism, Karlheinz Stockhausen. Blue Oktober, recorded in 1998, saw the light eight years later; its subtitle is "improvised compositions for piano: solo, duos, trios and percussion". Mills used tapes of live concerts as a basis, to which he added instant overdubs, capturing the whole in a single take. A superior stage of pianism is in this case showcased in shorter episodes and contrasting snippets, and parts of the program might result slightly difficult to digest for the scarcely trained. This record, too, is a magnificent example of clever improvisational craft, in a way appearing as the ideal complement for the contrapuntal lusciousness that characterizes the majority of Esfoma. I would definitely recommend to get a copy of both releases for better understanding the creative vision of this musician, whose dedication to the instrument is evidently visceral. A rare occasion in which the listener can be gratified either by an attentive, concentrated examination of the material or by keeping it at lower volume while maintaining the same sort of enchantment, such is the sheer delight originated by the mere presence of those gorgeous runs, clusters and designs which — even in the knottiest sections — seem to be influenced by a touch of romantic melancholy. This is what attributes a unique voice to Mills, a hitherto obscure talent that must be brought to wider attention worldwide, a veritable rejuvenator for those who feel tired of listening to problematic albums just for the sake of belonging to certain circles of (a)pathetic intellectualism. This stuff reconciles with life by respecting the true aim of music: something that's played from the heart, received by sensible human beings, able to elevate them that tiny bit indispensable for carrying on through the mental and emotional poverty experienced daily. Something that's plain beautiful. --Massimo Ricci, Temporary Fault, 28 Sept 2009 "Blue Oktober presents a set of 11 pieces that explore various properties of the piano. On the three pieces for multiple pianos, Mills has recorded an improvisation then overdubbed the remaining pianos on top of that. It creates an impressive, dense web of music with sounds passages colliding and careening nimbly off each other. The title track explores the inside of the piano. He also appears to be using a cymbal (or gong) with a bow placed inside or near the piano to get rich resonating textures. 'Formation III' also uses percussion but here it's overdubbed. On the solo pieces Mills demonstrates a technical mastery of the keyboard as well as two-fisted rhythmic drive. All in all Blue Oktober is an impressive recording of contemporary Piano music that straddles the line between free jazz and contemporary classical piano music. But it sells neither element short." --Robert Iannapollo, Cadence, Oct 2007 Pianist Greg Mills is into something here. Deriving influences from classicists, Stockhousen, Ives and others, he also intermixes elements of free-jazz piano great Cecil Taylor's aura into these relatively brief works. So, its a hybrid classical-jazz improvisation fest recorded live...the pieces tend to weave into a complex story line... And its largely about a continuous state of musical construction amid a few jarring meltdowns here and there...a ritualistic pattern of fragmented mini-motifs...[There are] noticeable accomplishments and acute vision during this curiously interesting endeavor. --Glenn Astarita, eJazz News, September 25, 2007