Carlos Niño & Sam Gendel

Sam Gendel and Carlos Niño are such perfectly paired collaborators that their one release together, 2019’s Raindiance/You’re Suspended, is now a collector’s item, fetching exorbitant prices online. In January 2018, they gathered to improvise a series of duets in a day, Gendel routing his saxophone through a series of pedals while Niño matched his motion with an idiosyncratic percussion ensemble of one. The results were a slippery New Age fantasy, with long tones that felt like colored smoke rings riding on a breeze of gentle bells and rhythms so casual they felt accidental. A series of 20 improvised pieces that last one minute or maybe eight, Raindiance/You’re Suspended was a warm afternoon’s daydream, all bright and fuzzy.

In the years since that sprawling partnership, Gendel and Niño have risen to individual prominence. Gendel is an imaginative and playful saxophonist, seemingly engaging a half-dozen different projects at once. And Niño has become a hyper-prolific spiritual leader of improvised music in Los Angeles, helping shepherd André 3000 toward an instrumental jazz dawn and building impressive cadres of collaborators. They’ve floated in and out of one another’s albums, offering one another inspirational fodder, and their floating partnerships were absolute highlights of Gendel’s massive pandemic-era set, Fresh Bread. They reconvene at Big Ears 2026, welcoming others into their state of endless bliss.