An elegantly conceived and beautifully packaged set of duets from the promising young pianist. There's a neat, palindromic shape to the programming. The first eight cuts are songs, followed by eight improvisations, with the artists recording in reverse order: so Frisell plays the first song and last improv, Lage the second and 15th cuts and so on, with Byron getting the back-to-back middle song and improv. The effect is to unify what is often the scattered sense you get when multiple artists link with a central performer. This sense of symmetry is encouraged by the tight choice of instrumentation: two guitars, two wind, two drummers. These boundaries make the ‘free’ edge of the music all the more intriguing as they push against the constraints set up by Davis. And, of course, the river running through it all is Davis' highly thought through, often sparse piano playing. To complement it all is a DVD, shot in monochrome where balance is again the key, a split screen combining a handheld and a fixed camera giving different points of view of the artists' interaction. The cameras reveal though, that this is a seriously earnest process; but in time Davis will surely undo the ties that bind.