The bassoon has had a chequered history in jazz and very few convincing soloists have emerged. Sara Schoenbeck might not rival Yusef Lateef for invention or classical crossover artist Daniel Smith for technique, but she certainly has a sense of individuality. She has one foot in the classical world of chamber music and one planted towards the free improv end of jazz, but whatever the context she has a distinctive tone, and a focus on timbre. This is at its best in the part of this duo album recorded at Pyatt Hall in Vancouver, in which she lets the acoustic of the building become part of her sound, along with Horvitz's sympathetic use of the hall's Steinway. The tracks from a Brooklyn studio (including minimal electronics) lack the immediacy of the hall, which allow one to wallow in the sound itself. That said, there is a sameyness about the compositions that mostly seem to wander along at an unhurried, not to say glacial, pace, piano and bassoon often sharing melodic lines with occasional tonal leaps. After listening through the 17 relatively short tracks a few times, it's not always easy to discern one from another, and they never really answer the question, ‘Why should I listen to this?’