There's a spark between them

SAN FRANCISCO - Standing next to each other, reed master Marty Ehrlich and pianist Myra Melford cut an almost comical figure. He's a large, imposing man with an affable air and a linebacker's build. She's small and slight, with elfin features framed by soft brown curls.

Onstage however, the physical contrast is instantly overshadowed by their shared instrumental prowess. Over the past decade, they've come together intermittently as one of jazz's most exhilarating duos. It's a context that offers a naked look at two improvisers open to any possibility, making music that's as likely to chant, murmur, and croon as it is to stomp and scream.

"A lot of the musicians I work with I think of as radical conservatives or conservative radicals, people not easily put into categories," says Ehrlich at a neighborhood pizza joint before a concert here last month. "They're creating music very rich in traditional elements, at the same time they're fashioning it in ways that are very personal and unique."

Ehrlich celebrates the release of "Spark!", his remarkable new duo album with Melford, at the Lily Pad tomorrow on a double bill with guitarist Rob Price's quintet. "Myra's like that. When we're playing together, I know we're going to get down."

Melford is an expert at playing within the piano, strumming or plucking the strings for a harp-like sound. She artfully employs extended technique on the keyboard, too, as a lilting, hymn-like solo might climax with thick, percussive chords as she rolls her fists over the keys. Meanwhile, Ehrlich's alto saxophone sound is so rich and pliant that it's easy to mistake it for a tenor, while his clarinet tone is dark and woody.

No stranger to stripped-down settings, he's recorded a series of stellar duo encounters, including albums with pianist-composer Muhal Richard Abrams and bassist Anthony Cox. Melford has also recorded duet projects with the antic Dutch drummer Han Bennink and most recently the intrepid Canadian violinist-violist Tanya Kalmanovitch.

"There's a good balance for both of us, in that we both like to play a nice melody and a nice groove, as well as using all the extended techniques, the more outside vocabulary," says Melford, 50, who relocated to the West Coast to teach at the University of California Berkeley in 2004 after more than two decades on the New York scene. "There are a lot of unknowns about what's going to happen. We're kind of on the edge, and I think that's what gets translated."

"As a woodwind player, the piano-horn thing is a natural," says Ehrlich, 52, a longtime New York City resident who commutes weekly to teach at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. "Myra and I both write stuff that is somewhat thematically based. But we both have a real focus on collective improvising. We're very much co-composing the pieces in each performance."

Though Melford and Ehrlich focus on original material, their repertoire includes a far-flung collection of tunes from the likes of pianist-composer Andrew Hill, singer-songwriter Robin Holcomb, and Chicago blues great Otis Spann. More than repertoire, however, it's their music's bracing mix of serenity and volatility that makes the partnership rewarding.

Melford composed many of the pieces for "Spark!" while reading Tariq Ali's polemic "Bush in Babylon: The Recolonisation of Iraq." She drew the titles for her tunes "A Generation Comes and Another Goes," "Night," and "I See a Horizon" from a verse Ali cites by the Iraqi poet Muhammad Mahdi al-Jawahiri

"Sometimes it sparks a melodic idea, sometimes a rhythmic feel, sometimes it's some sort of ostinato, in the case of 'Night,' " Melford says. "Whatever I start with I try to build from that."

Both Melford and Ehrlich trace their roots to seminal avant-garde collectives. Raised in the Chicago area, Melford gravitated to musicians associated with the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, particularly alto saxophonist-composer Henry Threadgill. She's probably best known for her celebrated quintet the Same River, Twice, featuring trumpeter Dave Douglas and cellist Erik Friedlander.

A product of the St. Louis scene, Ehrlich first recorded in 1972 at age 16 with the Human Arts Ensemble, a band associated with the daring confederation of musicians and poets known as the Black Artist Group.

After studying with composers George Russell and Gunther Schuller at New England Conservatory in the mid-'70s, he moved to New York City in 1978 and quickly established himself as one of the most versatile and valuable players on the scene, appearing on more than 100 recordings by musicians representing a broad range of improvisational idioms.

He and Melford played together in various contexts before they released their first duo album in 2001, "Yet Can Spring," a partnership that continues to grow and deepen.

"I always feel one of the exciting things is how we can communicate to an audience the intensity of music making," Ehrlich says. "The duo brings that to the fore, as long as you're willing to take enough risks and really push it."