Jason Robinson

Jason Robinson is a sax/clarinet player hailing from Southern California, and he runs his own music concern, Circumvention. This is a collection of duo performances with players of acoustic and electronic instruments. Each duet is quite strong, especially when Robinson's guests deploy electronics to match his playing. Robinson himself uses delays, complementing his tendency to use repetitive phrases in his playing. It's tempting to say he relies on repetition and variations on themes too much, but on a composed piece like the 19-minute "CT," propelled by Anthony Davis's rolling piano, he moves between overblown and fluid melodic runs. More highlights occur during the duos with Peter Kowald and George Lewis, with Kowald's ability to get deep, scraping noises from the acoustic bass matches nicely with Robinson's sustained bleats. Even better are the "duets" with electronic musicians, in which these musicians both respond and wrap themselves around Robinson's playing, making the whole sonic feel more vivid than just a reedsman and a keyboardist.