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	JIM HALL AND DAVE HOLLAND Quiet, please, we’re swinging

Coming up now on his 75th birthday (December 4), Jim Hall has never sounded more modern. That’s clear enough on his forthcoming duets CD, Free Association, with pianist Geoffrey Keezer (on AristShare, only at http://www.jimhallmusic.com/). In the late show at the Real Deal Café a week ago last Friday night (the opening of a three-night stand), playing with duo partner Dave Holland, he took "mainstream" jazz to the limits, harmonically and rhythmically, and proved himself as adept at electronic effects as the most volume-drunk young shredder.

Hall, especially when he doesn’t have to be heard over a drummer, likes his volume low. At the Real Deal when he played comping chords for Holland’s solos, the pitches barely sounded above the click of plectrum against strings. He fiddled with the volume knobs on his guitar all night, squeezing infinite gradations of pianissimo out of his tone colors. Or he’d turn to flick the chorusing effects box that sat on his amp. From solo to solo, or section to section of a piece, textures would thin, thicken, double, from lemony-tart single-note runs to oily, glycerine phrases or chords that hung in the air like droplets of dew on a leaf.

Hall and Holland were great foils — they chuckled frequently ("When you play with Dave Holland," Hall said at one point, "you know that if you just hang on everything will turn out all right") and grunted approving yeahs to each other. It was the audience that got the laugh on Hall’s opening "Dream Steps" (based on "You Stepped Out of a Dream"), a tricky extended boppish line, played in unison, with a witty little stop time built into the last phrase. Holland’s time is so sure that you feel his swing pulse even as he’s stepping out of walking fours with ornaments and passing figures. The call-and response passages, the bluesy "additive" rhythmic phrasing, a series of viscous ascending triplets from Hall, and the stomp of Holland’s heel during his own "Whirling Dervish" all kept the quiet night moving, and engrossing.