DYDO & ALAN SONDHEIM, STEPHEN - Dragon and Phoenix

Dragon and Phoenix refers to the names of the sound holes on the Chinese instrument known as the guqin, aka qin (gu is a prefix meaning ancient"), which figures prominently on this album of improvised acoustic duos, being heard on thirteen of the sixteen tracks, with two qins on four tracks. Stephen Dydo, former president of the New York Qin Society, is the more traditional player here, whereas Alan Sondheim has a style heavily based on free improvisation. The two bonded over their instrument collections, sometimes trading or loaning choice items. Dydo, who has also had lengthy careers as classical guitarist and as a twelve-tone composer, once told the author that a good day of composing yielded a measure and a half; this painstaking attention to detail has stood him in good stead during his more recent study of the qin. Sondheim, who has previously had three releases on ESP-Disk starting in the 1960s and has prolifically spread his recent musical evolution across a variety of other la