Red Sea Jazz Festival

Tenor saxophonist Ellery Eskelin and pianist Sylvie Courvoisier have similar conceptions in jazz and improvised music. They both play wide open improvisations drawing from many traditions and streams of music.This is a disc of nine spontaneously improvised pieces where the two musicians prove that they have much common ground and each proves to be a catalyst for the other, encouraging experimentation, exploration and collaboration in a way that makes for very appealing music. Both musicians have developed unique, individual approaches to improvised music, Courvoisier most fascinatingly, as she strums on the strings of the piano and taps percussively upon it, in addition to her traditional technique which expands the range of the music she is able to produce. Eskelin frequently uses short, clipped notes and bursts of notes the propel his ideas forward. This is a very interesting free jazz album, not free in the sense of squalling intensity, but free in the sense of wide open music that is able to move without constraint in musical space-time according to the wishes of the artists.