Andrew Rathbun & Gary Versace, Episodes Review

by Stamish Malcus

Andrew Rathbun and Gary Versace make composition and improvisation sound like a jazz performance of the same musical thought on Episodes. Counterpoint, harmonic color, rhythmic structure, and motivic development established in Rathbun’s writing continue through the improvisations, giving the music clarity. In this first duo recording by two longtime collaborators, freedom comes from two players knowing how to move independently within it.

The relationship is communicated in “Nine.” A piano figure opens the piece with multiple voices already active. Upper and lower lines establish movement while harmonic information occupies the space between them, creating an environment in which melody, accompaniment, and counterpoint are difficult to separate cleanly. When Rathbun enters, his warm saxophone sound and lyrical phrasing provide a recognizable lead voice, but Versace continues moving rather than settling into static chordal support.

The composition has a discernible shape, moving through sections that explore changing harmonic colors. Both musicians carry that architecture into the improvisation. Rathbun begins his solo lyrically in the lower register and gradually increases activity as he climbs through the horn. The result is a long dramatic arc rather than a succession of unrelated ideas. Each stage of the solo responds to the harmonic flow of the section beneath it, allowing register, density, and harmony to develop together.

Underneath that activity is another important element: pulse. A sixteenth-note subdivision can be felt in both musicians even when neither states it continuously. The time belongs to the duo rather than to one designated timekeeper.

Versace’s solo makes the contrapuntal conception still clearer. He begins with two-point counterpoint, developing tension between independent voices before arriving at a contemporary jazz cadence. When his texture eventually opens into single right-hand lines supported by left-hand figures, Rathbun returns with guide-tone support. The expected roles briefly invert. The saxophonist supplies harmonic information around the pianist, while Versace’s lines become the foreground.

It is a small moment that says much about Episodes: accompaniment is a function that either musician can assume rather than a permanently assigned role.

Rathbun’s interest in this kind of writing is deliberate as Episodes explores contrapuntal pieces and concert music incorporating improvisation. In 2025, Rathbun received a John Stites Jazz Award that enabled further study of counterpoint. In this project, one can hear how thoroughly contrapuntal thinking has entered the performing language of the duo.

“Still Life in Three Lines” makes the connection explicit as Baroque-flavored jazz lines move with a fugal quality. Individual voices entering and departing with rhythmic purpose and harmonic gravity. When the saxophone joins, another contrapuntal voice enters the texture. At times Rathbun doubles material contained in the piano; elsewhere the lines separate and pursue independent directions.

The straight-eighth placement and articulation give those voices forward movement while the harmonic relationships between them keep the texture coherent. Most importantly, Rathbun’s improvisation does not cause the contrapuntal premise to disappear. His saxophone solo continues inside it, with Versace generating independent melodic lines around him. Written counterpoint becomes improvised counterpoint.

That distinction is central to the album. The composition does not establish an intellectual device that the musicians abandon once the solos begin. It establishes a way of thinking.

Versace’s piano playing repeatedly creates harmony through moving voices rather than treating chords as stationary cushions beneath the saxophone. Movement of harmonic moments emphasize his preference for linear motion, an approach particularly compatible with Rathbun’s Baroque-tinged counterpoint and other structurally varied writing.

“Invisible Maps” shows how that structural thinking can create contrast too. A buoyant arpeggiated figure establishes constant movement, with harmonic colors changing inside the continuous eighth-note flow. Counterpoint gives the composition much of its character, but Rathbun’s solo marks a release from that persistent texture. The solo section opens into a jazz two-feel for development.

The pulse is ever present. Rathbun and Versace distribute it between their phrases, leaving space without losing the rhythmic center. Rathbun develops a clear motif, increasing its activity until it reaches a climax. The motif then becomes a means of release and transition into Versace’s solo.

Versace builds energy as his right hand moves through fluid lines that build with streams of eighth notes and increasingly active subdivisions. The underlying pulse remains grounded. When the contrapuntal material returns, the voices are beautifully balanced between saxophone and piano, with dynamics helping clarify their individual movement.

The resulting form is continuous contrapuntal motion with rhythmic space; Rathbun develops a motif toward a climax; Versace answers with his own increasingly active trajectory; and the contrapuntal language integrates the voices again.

Thelonious Monk’s “Boo Boo’s Birthday” provides a useful test because Rathbun’s compositional architecture is removed from the equation. Rathbun says the duo decided to play the Monk piece during the session itself. Versace also brought an arrangement of Charlie Parker’s “Red Cross,” giving the predominantly Rathbun-composed program points of contact with an established jazz repertoire.

Rathbun opens “Boo Boo’s Birthday” with warm, legato phrases moving fluidly across the saxophone’s register. An ascending figure carries a playful rhythmic cadence that eventually leads into Monk’s melody. Versace provides support, but again counterpoint remains part of the relationship between the instruments.

Both musicians retain Monk’s character. Rhythmic accents carry the expected angularity and swagger, with touches of stride entering Versace’s language and color tones receiving particular harmonic emphasis. The contemporary vocabulary appears naturally in the rhythmic freedom and metric shifts of their solos. The pulse exists in the way both feel the music. That shared center allows Rathbun and Versace to stretch phrases, alter placement, and move independently without making the performance feel rhythmically uncertain.

Counterpoint is clearly important to Rathbun’s compositions, but counterpoint alone does not define the duo. When Monk replaces Rathbun as composer, the musicians retain the same conversational grammar. A pulse can remain present without being continuously stated. A motif becomes a formal device inside a solo. Harmonic support can migrate from piano to saxophone. Counterpoint can move from composition into improvisation without a clear boundary between them.

That is where Episodes finds its freedom. Rathbun and Versace convey their spontaneity as something we can lean upon, as improvisation reveals possibilities already latent in the writing. Two musicians can move in different directions because both know where the center is, and we can easily follow.