Voice and piano, nothing to hide behind. Filmed by Jazz in Leeds, When We Were One sets Louise Gibbs alongside the American jazz pianist Kirk Lightsey in the most exposed format the music offers – a duo.
The players
Kirk Lightsey (born Detroit, 1937) is one of the great accompanists in jazz. Best known for his long partnership with Dexter Gordon, he has recorded with Chet Baker, Sonny Stitt, Bobby Hutcherson, Pharoah Sanders and Kenny Burrell – a pianist whose touch is built around singers and song.
Louise Gibbs is a singer, improviser and composer. New Zealand-born and based in London for more than twenty years before moving to Leeds, her bebop-rooted approach has been described as turning a well-worn standard into something newly imagined rather than simply performed.
In duo there is nowhere to sit back: every phrase is a conversation, each answering the other in real time. That exchange is the whole point of a performance like this one.