If an album sounds like it’s not going to work, it’s got to be one that a trumpeter (Eric Vloeimans) teamed up with an accordionist (Will Holsouser). This recording catches them during a 2021 tour of The Netherlands, and while you might expect these two to clear out any hall, the music is actually gorgeously inviting. What did I miss?
The entire 77 collection of sounds has the meditative folk feel of a Sunday afternoon picnic, sometimes with Holsouser’s fingers dancing on the notes on the festive “Deep Gap” or sighing for the pulsating “Redbug Winter”, gasping during “To Louis”. The two make dots and dashes on “Innermission II” and get churchy on the lilting “Children’s Song”. Vloeiman’s horn is fluffy and fragile, elegiac on “Tibi Gratiaas’ and hovering like a cloud on “Momu 5”. Pastel water colors that don’t run on the paper.