Lori Freedman & Scott Thomson

Plumb is an honest, no-frills document of two of the busiest musicians in Canadian improvised music joining forces for a good-humoured recording session. From a personality perspective, Toronto, ON trombonist Scott Thomson often plays the rascally rogue, while Montreal clarinettist Lori Freedman is more earnest and soulful in her musical explorations. In these solo and duet pieces, each player shifts their roles accordingly, calling and responding to nuanced appeals for new sounds from their respective instruments. Freedman generates squawks and squalls on "Aplomb” that are rhythmic and damn near poetic. "Two Depths” is moodier, beginning with the Theremin-like bubbling of Thomson’s gurgling trombone, which suspends Freedman’s subtle accompaniment in the air before both instrumentalists begin bristling at one another in concert. Such physiological experiments, where the trombone, clarinet and bass clarinet each are ascribed with communicative traits usually reserved for braying organisms, continue on the stirring "To Horn” and the subdued big-band musings of "Two Plums.” Those with some knowledge of Freedman and Thomson’s work as individuals will likely appreciate Plumb the most but there’s certainly something vivacious about their interplay.