Marilyn Crispell & Harvey Sorgen: Forest

In whatever stage, studio or musical environment these two supremely gifted improvisors find themselves, their talk is never anything other than bone-set honest. And as clarifying and compelling as so much of the duo's previous decades of recordings have been—preternatural recordings that include Anthony Braxton, Ahmad Jamal, Paul Simon, Cecil Taylor, Karl Berger and Joe Fonda—Forest, the starkly afire state of the union address delivered by 2025 NEA Jazz Master Marilyn Crispell and shifu percussionist Harvey Sorgen could very well be their master thesis.

Forest's opening title track tumbles in rubato but soon becomes a slugfest of ideas threatening all out escalation only to cliff-dive rubato once more to a close. Clamorously, "Wolf Moon" prowls from Sorgen's haunted SOS. The wolf (Crispell trilling) sets about the forest, its keen eye trained. Sorgen provides movement from shadow to shadow, echoes the animal's wild heart. The pianist focuses killer vision, takes after prey, traps, cries, struggles. That a piece of music this vivid and piercing doubles as a prelude to Sorgen's ringing meditation "Soundscape" only proves the vast potential of the human spirit to communicate its needs and longings.

"Overtures of Darkness and Light," "Remembrance of Karl"—a salute to mentor/inventor/peer, Karl Berger—the hard hitting, high ringing "Dulcimer," the enjambed logistics at play on "Air Dissolves, Water Rushes In" are just four of the ten re-imaginings of the piano/drums duet that Crispell and Sorgen have spent a lifetime challenging and being challenged by. Forest is one of those beatific endeavors that, when counted in among the course of human events, will go mostly unheralded and unheard, but will be no less important to future sociologists and musical creatives in the understanding of expression and communication among ourselves.

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