Crossfire Duo

Crossfire Duo consisted of percussionists Bob Fullex and Jason Bauers, and was active from 2010 through 2013. The two drummers met as teenagers in the wintry barracks of Buffalo, NY, taking lessons from the same local teacher, and continued their collaboration in grad school at SUNY Buffalo. The group 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) and Megan Grace Buegger’s Daring Doris–that didn’t even involve striking a single object. The duo performed these works around the Midwest and at prestigious festivals alongside ensembles such as the Slee Sinfonietta. Bob and Jason’s work eventually took them to different parts of the state, forcing Crossfire to hang up their sticks, but not before the duo executed an impressive recording of some of the key pieces of their rep. Recently unearthed, their album Vellum was released by Infrasonic Press in Summer 2023.