WILLIAM GOLDSTEIN Vilna. Looking for Kije. Point & Counterpoint. On the Steppes. On a Summer Afternoon: Allegretto. Loss. A Maiden Fair. Half-Forgotten Dreams. Courting. Movement for Violin & Piano: The Strand. In the Beginning • William Goldstein (pn); Various performers • NEW GOLD 0091 (72:19)

A feature that sets music apart from the other arts is that collaboration is accepted without a shade of criticism. This is the opposite of painting, for example, where millions of dollars turn on whether a picture is by Rembrandt, the studio of Rembrandt, or the school of Rembrandt. Music history, by contrast, celebrates the collaboration between Stravinsky and Balanchine or between Brahms and Joachim. The finished scores would not have been the same, and sometimes might not even exist, without joint enterprise. But I’ve never before encountered anything as intimate as William Goldstein’s practice of “collaborative composition,” which gives this new collection its title, Collaborative Composition: Created in the Moment.

The notion of creating a piece of music in the moment was central to First Impressions, Goldstein’s 1999 album of improvised solo piano pieces. The next step occurred in 2011, when he was serving as jury president of a music competition in Poland. “[There] I first learned that my ability to create in real time was not common amongst my colleagues.” One might not understand why this came as a surprise, given that jazz is an improvisatory art and that classical music contains many great improvisers—one can visualize Schubert at a party inventing German dances from the keyboard.

But what Goldstein had in mind was literally dual composition in the moment by two performers acting as composers. At first the notion seemed impossible, he writes. “Two composer/performers simultaneously trading ideas, creating structure and development, an actual musical composition?” But he found a way, as evidenced by the 11 works gathered here, each created and recorded in real time with seven different collaborators as duo partners. The only constant is Goldstein appearing as pianist throughout.

In the program notes he declares that in-the-moment or instant composition created a profound experience for him and his collaborators, yet I doubt many listeners will be prepared for how ingenious, seamless, and lovely these pieces are. Goldstein was urged out of his initial hesitancy by a close friend, the saxophonist/composer James DiPasquale, who had a jazz background and worked with jazz greats like Gerry Mulligan and Ella Fitzgerald. After enough persuasion, the two scheduled studio time, took a couple of days to get in the groove, and then experienced magic, in Goldstein’s words. The result was an entire album, In the Moment, of dual compositions.

Here we get two tracks, Loss and Looking for Kije, for tenor saxophone and piano. Loss is melodic and soulful; it creates a soft jazz mood. Most of the time the saxophone leads the way, but the essential thing is that this feels like a real composition unified by harmony, structure (however rhapsodic), and emotional intensity. Prokofiev wrote a prominent saxophone solo into his Lt. Kije, and without quoting it, Looking for Kije begins with an ostinato pulse that evokes Prokofiev’s playfulness and whimsy. Keeping the rhythmic foundation in the piano gives the saxophone space for the melodic inspiration, but there are changes of mood and shifts in balance along the way. The idiom of Kije isn’t jazzy, but rather a kind of organized Minimalism with a Russian flavor here and there.

I don’t have room to describe the other nine pieces, but it makes for easier reading to list the various performers here instead of in a headnote.

Vilna and Half-Forgotten Dreams—Lili Haydn (violin)

Point & Counterpoint and A Maiden Fair—Laurence Juber (guitar)

On the Steppes and Courting—Maksim Velichkin (cello)

On a Summer Afternoon: Allegretto—Elisabeth Basoff-Darskaia (violin)

Movement for Violin & Piano: The Strand—Pei-Wen Liao (violin)

In the Beginning—Karl Berger (vibraphone)

As one listens, the telling thing is that this doesn’t sound like an album of free-form improvisations, which would quickly become tiresome. The tracks, which vary in length from three to 10 minutes, were recorded in the studio except for Movement for Violin & Piano: The Strand, which was created in concert. Given that DiPasquale and Goldstein took two days before feeling secure in the process of instant composition, one imagines some warmup time for the other collaborations as well.

An agreed-upon mood and genre probably entered into the planning, as in the quasi-Baroque dance that is the basis of Point & Counterpoint, which features canon and even actual counterpoint, which remarkably enough wasn’t preplanned. On the Steppes is vaguely like a Russian song, but rather than being a genre sleuth, I’d say that the overall feeling begins in the gentle, melodic, constantly moving style of pianist George Winston in his prime on Wyndham Hill with hit albums based on the four seasons. Variety is added by moving from guitar, violin, and cello to vibraphone and saxophone, but on the whole I’d call this an album for easy listening. The performers are all expert on their respective instruments, and when they take the opportunity to unleash a bit of technical display, another dimension is added to the music’s general appeal. Warmly recommended. Huntley Dent

This article originally appeared in Issue 45:3 (Jan/Feb 2022) of Fanfare Magazine.