A Duo’s Meeting of the Minds

There are some intriguing contrasting elements at work this week in the duo performance of clarinetist Eddie Daniels and pianist Fred Hersch at the Jazz Bakery. The programs, all of which are being recorded for a CD, echo a similar duet appearance last year by Daniels and pianist Roger Kellaway.

The Daniels-Kellaway performance was an almost symbiotic creative encounter between players with similarly high-energy, virtuosic styles. Daniels and Hersch make a far different combination, one in which a rich potential for emotional layering is blended around a similarly high degree of technical expertise.

In Wednesday night’s opening set, there were moments in which the two players still seemed to be feeling their way through the musical relationship. In the opening tune, for example--a gorgeous, floating line written by Hersch, titled “Endless Stars”--Daniels and Hersch both began their solos softly before moving into more intense, multi-noted areas, somewhat undercutting the song’s lyrical qualities.

Similar uncertainties popped up on other material--not surprising, given the fact that the duo had only a day of rehearsal in which to work out the material and, more important, find an expressive linkage.

Other numbers displayed considerably more creative potential, once that expressive linkage began to come into place. One of the best was a fascinating rendering of “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You,” in which the theme emerged through various bits and pieces of fragmentation, building to a passage in which the melody was tossed back and forth, and climaxing with a stunning, unaccompanied passage by Daniels.

Another plus: Hersch’s “At the Close of the Day,” based on a poem by Walt Whitman, and tango-tinged “Canzona,” along with Daniels’ “Summer’s Gone,” offered composed material with plenty of potential for spontaneous variation and improvisation.

By the close of the set, the creative, compositional and emotional synchronization between Hersch and Daniels had come fully into focus. At that point it became clear that what was ultimately most appealing about their musical rendezvous was the coming together of their differences--the manner in which each found, within his individual art, a thematic route to connect with the other.

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Eddie Daniels & Fred Hersch, Jazz Bakery, 3233 Helms Ave., Culver City. Tonight-Sunday, 8 and 9:30 p.m. $25. (310) 271-9039.