Two is Enough: Sara Serpa/Matt Mitchell Duo at IMA

There is a small but satisfying number of great duo pairings in jazz. The work of Chick Corea/Gary Burton, Bill Evans/Jim Hall, Albert Manglesdorff/Lee Konitz, Archie Shepp with Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen and Harold Mabern, and most of all, Charlie Haden’s duos with Pat Metheny, Ornette Coleman, Alice Coltrane, Hank Jones, Hampton Hawes, Don Cherry and Paul Motian, come immediately to mind.

The duo is a daunting but rewarding configuration. It requires intense interplay, musicians must listen deeply and react spontaneously, creating a true musical dialogue. The duo provides space and simplicity, featuring "open doors" for improvisation and freedom. And there must be a shared philosophy, successful duos develop a common musical language, understanding each other's phrasing, rhythm, and harmonic ideas. 

By those standards, the duo of vocalist Sara Serpa and pianist Matt Mitchell can take its place in the pantheon. Their new recording, End of Something, which they showcased with an east coast tour supported by a South Arts’ Jazz Roads grant, stands as a shining example of the art of the duo. Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares hosted Serpa and Mitchell in concert at the Institute For the Musical Arts in Goshen, MA on December 6.

The event, attended by 40 listeners, mirrored the record, produced on Mitchell’s Obliquity label. They began with a Serpa original, “News Cycle”, with its quick, spiraling repetitive motif, which bookended an open middle section. As is her wont, Serpa’s wordless vocals predominated. Her range is modest and her sound production breaks no new ground, yet she is a convincing, compelling singer, with a bell-like voice.

“Sara inhabits a very specific world,” Mitchell explains, “and I relish the kinds of parameters she brings to improvisation. It calls for a different kind of intensity-more aired out, more patient, with a lower volume ceiling but a huge range of nuance.”

One highlight was Serpa’s searching composition, “Carry You Like a River”, using a haiku written by Sonia Sanchez. “Carry you like a river/Strong currents in my heart/Always flowing, love's constant art.”

Serpa is no stranger to the duo format. She has three engrossing duo recordings with pianist Ran Blake, her mentor at the New England Conservatory of Music, and two with her husband, the guitarist, André Matos, with whom she played in IMA’s big barn with pianist Dov Manski in 2023. Serpa first worked with Mitchell in 2018, when John Zorn commissioned her collaboration with Nigerian writer Emmanuel Iduma. That  recording, Intimate Strangers, released in 2021, landed on Best Album of the Year lists in The NY Times, The Nation and Arts Fuse. Serpa is an accomplished educator, and with Jen Shyu co-founded M³ (Mutual Mentorship for Musicians), a groundbreaking collective dedicated to supporting women and gender-expansive artists through mentorship, collaboration, and community-building. Some M³ mentees (Lesley Mok, Isa Crespo Pardo, Maya Keren) have connections to IMA, which also centers women.

Mitchell likewise has experience in twosomes, including two duo records with saxophonist Tim Berne and discs with percussionist Ches Smith, and his wife, the drummer Kate Gentile. The 50-year old pianist, who grew up in the Philadelphia area, has an impressive and burgeoning resumé, having worked in Berne’s band Snakeoil, and the ensembles of Dave Douglas, Anna Webber, John Hollenbeck, Dan Weiss, Miles Okazaki and Jon Irabagon, among many others. He penned the majority of the compositions, many of which inhabit a meditative and emotionally full space, played at relaxed tempos. “From the beginning, I felt I could count on Matt,” Serpa recalls. “There was no fear of getting lost. He listens so deeply-and understands the voice in a way that’s rare.”

While some ensembles produce a variety of music in multiple styles, others, like the Sara Serpa/Matt Mitchell Duo, inhabit a very particular sound world. Operating within confines of their own choosing, these two exploratory musicians have created a finely shaded acoustic landscape full of subtlety and feeling. We are all the better for it.