Search - Bruce Arnold Olivier Ker Ourio :: Duets

Music festivals bring musicians from all over the world together, and wonderful projects evolve from these meetings. When harmonica virtuoso Olivier Ker Ourio (France) met electric guitarist Bruce Arnold (USA) at an international jazz festival in Monterrey Mexico they both felt a strong musical kinship. Olivier visited the USA a few months later, and he and Bruce took time to create a CD's worth of duets based on Bruce's compositions simply entitled "Duets" (MSK 122). A transformation occurs when any piece of music originally arranged for several instruments is condensed into the duet form. In this case, the sweet and wistful timbre of Olivier's harmonica lends a warm familiarity to even the most angular of Arnold's compositions. Arnold, who is known for his fiery excursions into the land of twelve-tone soloing is content to be the bedrock here, holding down harmony and grooves while Ker Ourio swoops and glides with the melodies.