Derek Bailey

Derek Bailey (guitar) & Mm Xiao-Fen (pipa). Recorded N.Y.C. 1999." I met Derek at Clinton Studio and we started recording. I remember that my playing felt stiff at first, but I told myself to watch, listen and try to a have dialog with him and most importantly to follow my feelings. I still remember, during the middle of one track, Derek broke a string. I thought he might stop, but he continued playing, using the broken string to scratch on the frets. The results sounded incredible. Incredibly, our CD, Viper (Avant), was named one of The Wire magazine's “1998 Albums of the Year”. Derek and I went on tour playing concerts in Berlin, Graz and other European cities. I learned so much from him. We released a second recording of duets called Flying Dragon (Incus) and Coda magazine listed it as ”2003 Album of the Year”