Crossfire Duo consisted of percussionists Bob Fullex and Jason Bauers. The two drummers met as teenagers in the wintry barracks of Buffalo, NY, and took their name from one of the first pieces they tackled, Richard Festinger’s Gordian, stamina-testing, Crossfire, which they spent a year perfecting.
Always a collaborative project, Crossfire built their distinctive repertoire from the ground up, commissioning new works from Rust Belt-based composers with whom they worked very closely, allowing these artists to help shape the duo into what it became (their only stipulation being that each piece’s percussion battery be able to wedge into a small sedan for touring). Through intense basement sessions marked by trial, error, and experimentation, Crossfire and their collaborators cultivated an eccentric arsenal of pieces marked by a variety of newly-developed and highly-nuanced techniques, including some works–like Jacob Gotlib’s Portrait Sequence (Blanching Out)–that didn’t even involve striking a single object.
Crossfire hung up their sticks in 2013, but not before they executed an impressive recording of some of the key pieces of their rep. Recently unearthed, their album Vellum features two works by the duo’s composer-collaborators: Gotlib’s Portrait Sequence and Matt Sargent’s Small Stones, the latter played entirely on diaphanous, high-frequency metallophones. The set open’s with Crossfire’s namesake composition, demonstrating the duo’s virtuosic force with Festinger’s unpredictable high-speed staccato constructions.
The record concludes with Christian Wolff’s Flustist (and) Percussionist, realized here without the titular wind player, allowing the listener to focus on the intricate rhythmic dialogue between two musicians at the height of their abilities. A decade after its recording, Vellum is finally being released in June of 2023.
For complete credits and liner notes, download the Vellum booklet.