Julius Hemphill, Abdul Wadud

condition (record/cover): NM / NM

Alto saxophone and cello, alone, in front of an audience. Julius Hemphill and Abdul Wadud worked as a duo for years and it remains one of the great instrumental partnerships of the American avant-garde: Hemphill bringing Texas blues phrasing and the compositional rigour that would shape the World Saxophone Quartet, Wadud playing cello with a pizzicato attack that functions as bass, drums and second horn all at once. Live In New York is the pair with nothing to lean on, moving between written material and open improvisation with no visible seam. Concentrated, conversational, entirely gripping.

Original Italian Red Records pressing. Two players who understood each other completely, documented at their peak.