Listen: Vijay Iyer and Craig Taborn’s Collaborative Debut Preview

At last, the first snippet from Vijay Iyer and Craig Taborn’s collaborative debut is here—the vertiginous “Sensorium” from The Transitory Poems, due March 15 on ECM. Two of our era’s most impressive pianists, improvisers, and thinkers, Taborn and Iyer have been occasionally working together as an interlocked piano duo for a decade. Their relationship stems from a spell shared in Roscoe Mitchell’s ensemble. “Sensorium” is a splendid, breathless piece, with bits of the blues and Ives’ sonatas first pushing against and atop one another. But there’s a delicacy to the framework, rays of light among the sweeps and spirals of notes. Toward the end, that light comes to the front and into focus during a beautiful sort of anticlimax. Give it a listen, and see this tandem at Big Ears 2019.