Passarell/Pino Duo-Luna's Cafe, Sacramento CA; 3/19/18

Last night's show at Luna's was supposed to feature, along with Sacramento Fusion band Exigency, Brandon Evans and myself in duo. Sadly, Brandon had fallen victim to this winter's horrendous stomach flu bug, and had to back out. After scrambling for a few hours, and at one point basically cancelling, I heard from multi-instrumentalist and all around great dude Tony Passarell that he'd be able to sub for Bran.
A really lovely, rain free drive up 680 and 80 had me marveling at lovely flowers and the green sparkle that makes California so magical in March. Seeing the snow capped Sierra foothills east of Sacramento upon my approach was great, too.
Seeing as that Evans and I had planned on using a composition that I'd worked out, Dream Etude, I figured that Tony and I should do the same. A quick confab with him, in which he transposed my simple melodic line pretty easily, and off we went. We started with a cool rubato exchange, per the sheet music, which led to some quicker melodic/percussive exchanges. Tony and I have played together in duo before, so I figure that there may have been a bit of back and forth probing going on. Our pace picked up after a bit, eventually leading to me busting out some spontaneous poetry. It felt Beat to me! What can I say, the Spirit moved me. Tony was really gracious about leaving gaps for my un-mic'd words there. Really sensitive playing. Quickly thereafter, we mixed it up, me on brushes and Tony wailing. Free Energy! Yeah!
A bit later, and we got into some short punctuation with scraped drums/cymbals and staccato tenor bursts, on which Tony utilized electronic enhancements on his tenor sounds. This passage had me switching to gong and wooden flutes, where I felt shamanic as all get out. Tony laid out and let me do it there, before joining back in for some more tenor/traps mixing, a bit more readily rhythmic this time.
After about thirty minutes, Dream Etude ending. Tony suggested that we play one more, which I should start with a drum roll. I obliged happily. We burned for about five more minutes on a tenor madness tip, Tony really laying it all out, and done.
I have to say I felt really good about our set. The only bummer about the evening was Brandon Evans missing out, but Tony subbed really elegantly. Many thanks, Mr. Passarell!
Big ups to Billy of Exigency, for letting me back line with his beautiful Yamaha kit. Thank you, sir.
Sacramento is lucky to have Luna's Cafe.

Below: live shots by and courtesy of Russ Tucker, thanks Russ!

Above: Dream Etude, my first written composition since 1994. There will be more....