“At its heart, our music is an intimate conversation between two instruments,” that’s how Alisa Rose, a Grammy-nominated violinist describes the latest album “Curios” created with her musical partner Tristan Scroggins.

The best conversationalists, like the best musicians excel in listening and in understanding the value of silence. This recording is a beautiful map of musical landscapes with winding roads that cross valleys and mountains of sound on the road to some place familiar and still unexplored.

The word “intimate” is especially appropriate in talking about this music. The sparse nature of two people playing together allows the listener to hear the melodic dance as one sound follows another, reacts, pushes away or dances alongside. Following that musical dance is something unique to this recording. Where a larger band can create a wall of sound that is often powerful, the power here comes from the space between the sounds, the silences woven into the mix by the players. The absence of that wall of sound allows us to hear and appreciate the foundations of the music.

Listeners will no doubt hear the influences of bluegrass, classical and jazz. Scroggins and Rose are indeed following in the footsteps of Darol Anger, Mike Marshall, Bela Fleck, David Grisman and others of the modern acoustic sound but there is a significant and important development going on as well.

While some tracks like “Marvel” or “Wisconsin Wayside” follow a more conventional, albeit sparse, structure, others like “Stellar Sea” or “French Cowboy” develop more like a musical hide and seek where the destination is a mystery. Chamber Folk Music or Intimate Conversational Music, we may eventually create new names for the path these artists are forging but for now it’s probably enough to use words like “Beautiful, spacious, glorious and often perfect”.

-Kevin Slick