The Atonal Guitar Duo is the collaboration of Central Texas-based guitarists and composers Jared E. Davis and Kevin Metzger. Working around and within Davis’s atonal system for composition and improvisation, the pair deconstructs traditional harmony to rebuild it from pure interval relationships, creating music that is at once rigorously structured and strikingly direct. Situated at the intersection of contemporary jazz, serialism, and sound art, The Atonal Guitar Duo offers a glimpse of ordered sound beyond functional tonality; music that rewards close analysis yet resonates viscerally

Davis, steeped in 20th-century serialism, devised an intervallic vocabulary yielding a self-contained framework for atonal composition and improvisation. Bonding in late 2022 over a broad background in contemporary classical, jazz, and free improvisation, Metzger became the system’s first dedicated student of this new method. Together, their equal partnership balances analytical precision with improvisational intuition; composed melodies intertwine with improvised phrases that are negotiated in real time, yet bound to the underlying logic of their interval sets.

The duo’s forthcoming self-titled debut album, tracked live in 2024 at Austin’s legendary Cedar Creek Studio, distills two years of collaborative work into seven tracks that span musical sculptural textural studies and high-density intervallic exchanges. Highlights include Four Seconds, a dense yet luminous piece premiered on Texas Public Radio’s Performance Saturday, sculptural sound-masses in Wash & Blocks, as well as atonal nods to Miles Davis and Johann Sebastien Bach.

The Atonal Guitar Duo has performed around central Texas including giving a lecture and recital. On-stage, they fuse serial precision with the open-ended spirit of a jazz gig. Proof that “atonal” doesn’t have to mean “unfriendly.” This duo invites listeners into their world one half or whole-step at a time; no degrees required, just curious ears.