Vibraphonist, Michael Davidson (Hobson’s Choice, Otterville) and double bassist, Dan Fortin (Myriad3, Bernice) are two of Toronto’s most in demand musicians. They have been playing together for over a decade in various creative projects. After working so often as a team, it made perfect sense for the two to focus on the unique musical aesthetic they’ve cultivated over the years. Hence the birth of a new duo named, Clock Radio.

There is no musical setting more intimate than the duo. Each musical gesture is exposed, and without empathic listening on the part of both musicians, it cannot succeed. These pieces blur the line between composition and improvisation, drawing equally from jazz, free music, and classical composition.

Clock Radio is an album, through and through: it can be listened to as one long piece, rather than as a collection of disparate songs. Melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic thematic materials recur throughout the entire narrative. The duo creates musical material to engage with feelings of nostalgia: they explore the way a narrative is influenced by gestures in the present moment. Each piece is inextricably linked with memories of past thoughts and feelings. This album is an intimate and vibrant portrait of a duo at the height of its expressive powers. The pair seamlessly weave through time and space, flowing through a lush soundscape of moods and textures.

Clock Radio : Released March 22, 2019

Throughout, there is a most potent quality of in-the-moment awareness, of sonic intelligence – rendered often with gear-shifting subtlety, as rubato contemplation and off-centred walking lines morph into an assertiveness of touch, line and rhythmic drive as crisp as it is fluid.

-Michael Tucker, Jazz Journal

Davidson and Fortin are of a single mind throughout Clock Radio, seeking to explore, and then reach beyond, the limits of what their two instruments are capable of when they’re the only two in the room.

–Jeff Tamarkin, JazzTimes