Live :   The two of us came to this collaboration with two very different musical backgrounds. We had no established, mutual musical expression from the start. So when we began exploring the music, at the same time we had to explore the duo. Do people hear the same thing when they come from different practices and backgrounds and languages? If my partner both listens for and finds treasures and possibilities that differ from those I find, and speaks other languages than I do, how then can we build something of value together? The answer, as I see it, is through acceptance for the coincidences that arise, including our own impulses. As an improvisor I am accustomed to working with an open mind, to trusting coincidences and spontaneity. But it felt like this challenge was at another level: the musical material was chaotic and tenacious, my taste and abilities and impulses kept colliding with it. And because of our different backgrounds, no simple solutions were available. For a long time I felt like we were getting nowhere. But after hours and hours of rehearsing, experimenting, performing, and involving in the work, a network of sounding experiences had become part of our shared memory, had become a language without our noticing it. At a point this language was ready to play, and this transcended the questions we’d had at the outset. 

L :   And in the interspace between us, we both witness a story emerging, together with a conceptual apparatus that can be put into use. 

L :   Yes, we must constantly ask one another questions, try to understand one another. And it is in this third place, the interspace between our practices and persons, that the fruitful occurs. In interaction with both clear and veiled memories. I am fascinated by the communication that takes place when the music ‘plays us’ more than vice versa and the duo becomes ‘a third body’ that listens and breathes and speaks its own language.