Perndorff

The aptly named Perndorff pairs two musicians in an intimate setting that explores the meeting of their instruments and compositional sensibilities. Recorded at Pernes's private studio in Vienna on September 5, 2003, and released by Not Two, the album brings together pianist and composer Thomas Pernes (1956–2018) and guitarist Andy Manndorff — both Viennese, both restless figures who built their careers refusing to stay inside any single idiom.

The pairing makes sense once you know the players. Pernes was an Austrian avant-garde composer who, as early as the 1980s — before 'crossover' was even a word — folded folk, jazz, and electronics into the classical avant-garde, later developing his own form of music theater he called Klangtheater. Manndorff spent the 1980s in Amsterdam and New York before returning to Vienna in 1995, honing one of the more distinctive voices in contemporary guitar — a player who never lets virtuosity become an end in itself. Two composers, in other words, who treat improvisation and composition as a continuum rather than opposing camps.

That sensibility shapes the music: a sequence of mostly brief, conversational exchanges that play less like finished pieces than sketches and gestures, the two instruments trading ideas, interrupting, and circling back. Captured close and unforced in a private studio, with all compositions credited jointly, Perndorff is a modest record by design — not a grand statement but a document of two like-minded artists enjoying each other's curiosity. For listeners drawn to the borderland between contemporary composition and free improvisation, it's a quietly rewarding listen.