Playscape Recordings is proud to release Pictures, a duo recording by guitarist/composer Michael Musillami and pianist/composer and co-leader Peter Madsen. This is their second duo recording, following Part Pitbull released in 2002.

In Pictures, the duo draws inspiration from Pictures at an Exhibition, an 1874 suite by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky as a memorial to his friend, Russian architect and painter Viktor Hartmann, who died in 1873 at age thirty nine. Shortly after the artist's death, Mussorgsky visited an exhibit of Hartmann's sketches, architectural and costume designs, which came from Hartmann's travels in Europe, and decided to capture the experience with musical depictions of ten paintings by Hartmann, interspersed with a recurring promenade.

"In 2002, Peter Madsen and I released our first duo recording titled Part Pitbull on the Playscape Recordings label," writes Musillami in his liner notes. "Before Part Pitbull we had been recording and touring in a quartet setting, but as we both loved the immediacy and quick reaction time one can experience in a duo setting, Part Pitbull was born. In this intimate duo setting we instinctively breath together, we recognize color and texture and react quickly and convincingly to each other with sensitivity as well as with power. The seamless rhythmic momentum and call and response is immediate, natural, and organic as we allow the music to go when and where it needs to go. We hope you enjoy your journey as much as we did as you promenade through our museum filled with our jazz heroes' Pictures."

Madsen adds, "In 2019, my longtime friend and musical partner Michael Musillami and I composed and improvised Pictures (at a Jazz Exhibition), a suite of nine piano and guitar duets plus varied Promenades. For our suite we composed pieces depicting our tour of an exhibition of some of our favorite jazz guitarists and pianists such as Cecil Taylor, Carla Bley, Thelonious Monk, Jim Hall and Joe Diorio, with each piece serving as a musical illustration of each of our heroes. Lots of Improvisations are included! But still cool music! Close your eyes! Open your ears! And see Pictures!!!"

Pictures was recorded by master engineer Nick Lloyd at Firehouse 12 in New Haven, Connecticut.