Angelica Sanchez & Wadada Leo Smith - Twine Forest (2013)

A duo is the most intimate of encounters in jazz – such a tête-à-tête demands rare communication, forcing each player to open up, unable to rely on group interplay. The duo of pianist Angelica Sanchez & trumpet great Wadada Leo Smith is a special relationship, new yet not new. Sanchez has been part of two Smith-led projects, the Golden Quartet and Organic, and their duo relationship arose naturally out of their past encounters. Following several all-improvised concerts together, Sanchez and Smith have created their first album together with Twine Forest, the ravishing result of improvisational communion in the studio. Smith’s tone is like silver – glinting off Sanchez’s chords and lines, glowing in resonance with the strings of the piano. TheLos Angeles Times has said that Smith – who was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize last year – “not only recalls Miles Davis at his most uncompromising but also builds upon his legacy to the point where such comparisons lose meaning.” And The New York Timeshas said: “In her piano playing and compositions, Angelica Sanchez seeks out the lyrical heartbeat within any avant-garde storm,” while All About Jazz has called her “a perceptive composer and cunning improviser.”

About her partnership with Smith, Sanchez says: “You can really get to know another musician playing in a duo – and it has been an amazing experience with Wadada. I get lost in his sound. He’s acutely sensitive to the piano, playing to the instrument –into it literally sometimes, so that when I leave the sustain pedal down, we get these wonderful vibrations; but also in a larger, cosmic sense with the way he plays to the idea of the piano and what it can do. We get an expansive sound together. He’s also such a master improviser, having developed his own language over the years – this unique voice. When I play with Wadada, he makes me listen differently. He gets deep into the music, and time slows down, so that an hour can feel like five minutes.”

Tracklist:

1. Cones Of Chrome (04:33)
2. Veinular Rub (08:56)
3. Retinal Sand (06:46)
4. Echolocation (07:27)
5. Light Black Birds (05:45)
6. Twine Forest (08:15)
7. In The Falls Of… (07:34)
8. Ultimate Causes (09:28)

Personnel:

Angelica Sanchez - Piano
Wadada Leo Smith - Trumpet