A Tight Fit for Flutist, Pianist

In the course of their performance Thursday at Steamers Cafe, flutist Holly Hofmann and pianist Bill Cunliffe covered jazz standards, blues, Brazilian tunes, a classical piece by Robert Schumann and an ethereal Cunliffe original he called New Age.

As impressive as this wide embrace of forms was, it wasn’t the most amazing aspect of their duo appearance. Instead, it was the way the flutist and the pianist fit their sounds together, hand-in-glove, no matter what they were playing.

Hofmann and Cunliffe have been working together for about five years, and both had extensive early classical training. Cunliffe won the prestigious Thelonious Monk International Piano Competition in 1989. Hofmann, one of the most accomplished flutists around, has single-handedly destroyed the stereotype of the delicate female flutist, thanks to her muscular attack and improvisational abandon.

Working from their new album, “Just Duet,” the two showed tight interplay, smart responsiveness and an ability to combine their individual styles seamlessly. Even the most familiar songs were freshened with a variety of mood and tempo changes.

Opening, as they do on the album, with George Gershwin’s “But Not for Me,” the two swung easily through its theme, then took turns displaying their fondness for variation. Hofmann’s fleet, lyrical lines bounced above Cunliffe’s firm accompaniment. During his solo, Cunliffe’s left hand worked up a stride-piano pace while the right hand developed stately figures that developed fugue-like echoes.

“Willow Weep for Me” was similarly turned inside out, given a considered theme treatment that emphasized the song’s blues feeling before taking off on Hofmann’s dancing lines.

Percussionist Brian Kilgore joined the duo for Cunliffe’s New Age tune “Home,” adding subtle rings, ticks and whirs from a variety of noisemakers rather than keeping any central beat. The impressionistic piece, unlike most of what is called New Age music, had a sense of emotion and seemed closer to the French classical tradition of Debussy, Ravel and Faure than the commercially successful music of Yanni and John Tesh.

Kilgore switched to congas for the Baden Powell number “Canto de Ossanha,” which gave Cunliffe a chance to show a more rhythmically minded attack. On the blues tune that followed, Cunliffe moved to synthesizer to develop rollicking organ chords that Hofmann stitched with hard-swinging lines.

The performance lost momentum when Hofmann and Cunliffe pulled out sheet music for Schumann’s Romance No. 2 for Flute and Piano. Despite its reserved beauty, was too tame compared with what they’d played before.