Don’t expect a set programme when Dwight Hart and Taylor Rankin perform tomorrow at the Bermuda College.

The duo delight in breaking the rules.

They like to improvise. They like to get the audience involved. Sometimes there are fish sandwiches.

Their love of rule breaking was apparent from their first performance together during the 2009 Mary J Blige concert.

There was a set programme for violinist Mr Rankin to follow, but he took off on his own; Mr Hart happily followed on drums.

“Afterward I was like, ‘What was that?’,” said Mr Hart, 53. “But I loved it. I just love to take something musical, break it down and rearrange it into something new and special.

“Most people would gasp if they broke a Tiffany lamp. I’d say, ‘Let’s pick up all the pieces and make something beautiful and new’.”

Mr Hart has performed here and abroad with local groups Exotique and The Wall Street Band. Mr Rankin, 34, has worked with well-known entertainers Wyclef Jean, Mary J. Blige and Erykah Badu and is a frequent performer in Egypt and Israel.

He and Mr Hart met by coincidence at Boston’s Logan Airport. They had no idea they’d both been hired to perform in concert with Mary J. Blige.

“We just struck up a conversation,” said Mr Rankin. “We didn’t know until we got to Bermuda that we were supposed to be playing together.”

After the concert they got together and jammed.

“When I work with people I like to just sit and talk together for two days,” said Mr Rankin. “It makes the music more honest. I want us to feel both naked and safe to create.”

Mr Hart appears on Mr Rankin’s 2010 album, Violin, Voice, Drum.

The duo also performed together at a concert organised by Mr Rankin last year, and at the opening of Marcus’ at the Hamilton Princess.

Music is in Mr Hart’s blood. His grandfather, drummer Elliston Butterfield, played for silent movies in Bermuda in the 1920s and his uncle Charles Butterfield was a drummer with Hubert Smith.

His “musical father” and mentor however, has always been Clarence “Tootsie” Bean.

“At seven, I stalked Tootsie,” said Mr Hart. “My aunt and uncle lived next door to him and I would visit them on Fridays. I would just go over to his house, let myself in and start playing his drums. He never refused me.”

Mr Bean gave him drum lessons and organised his first performance at age nine, with Ghandi Burgess in what was then a hot nightclub, the Jungle Room.

“He was the one who really encouraged me to study music at Berklee College in Boston at age 16,” Mr Hart said. “The most important lesson he taught me was to stay humble.”

Mr Rankin said his mother taught him the same lesson.

“She studied music in Japan,” he said. “She had perfect pitch and I couldn’t get away with anything musically when she was around.

“Whenever I did something good as a kid in music, she would say, ‘Big fish, small pond’. In some ways, that was bad, because I felt like I could never do anything great. On the other hand, it kept me humble.”

He said when it comes to picking collaborators, he looks for character first.

“They have to be a great musicians second.”

He was inspired by Mr Hart’s former work with young people.

Mr Hart worked for as a care officer in Boston in the early 2000s. He also worked with sick children at Dana Farber Cancer Institute and with emotionally disturbed children at Boston Children’s Hospital.

“I would take some of the children home for codfish and potatoes,” Mr Hart said. “They loved that. It really changed the temperature of things. It really pays when you give of yourself.”

In 2006, he returned to Bermuda and worked with troubled youngsters at Oleander Cottage.

“I thought I was going to be teaching them,” he said, “but they really taught me a lot about myself. I had three boys there that I mentored. I would often take them with me to music practices and let them watch. I left that job a few years ago.”

The duo will also perform this summer as part of Leroyfest, a concert featuring Mr Rankin and his violin Leroy.

“Leroyfest is about bringing together as many collaborations as possible,” said Mr Rankin. “Even if a collaboration just consists of a guy providing a ladder, and another providing the food. I like to customise an incredible show where people’s minds are blown.

“People should walk out of a show thinking they paid too little for their ticket.”

The concert takes place between 6pm and 9pm in the North Hall Lecture Theatre. Hour-long workshops are on offer on March 30, starting at 4pm. Admission is $20 for students and $35 for adults.

For more information contact Shawn DeShields on 236-9000 ext 4252 or sdeshields@college.bm