The friendly relations between contemporary forms of jazz and classical music are taken for granted these days, and this is a particularly fine example, a kind of jazz-inflected chamber music. It is a set of duets for tenor saxophone (Turner) and piano (Iverson), by players who delight in each other’s work and company. The atmosphere is calm and reflective, with few if any dramatic highs but plenty of melody and lively exchanges. Mark Turner’s sound – delicate, almost ethereal, especially in the upper register – is something we rarely hear nowadays, although the young Stan Getz and others cultivated it in the late 1940s and early 50s. Combined with Turner’s mercurial phrasing it’s very effective.
Ethan Iverson is as endlessly resourceful as ever. There’s never a moment when he isn’t either launching a new idea or expanding on one that Turner has launched. Six of the nine tracks are his compositions, two are by Mark Turner, and one by the late saxophonist Warne Marsh – a big influence on them both. Iverson calls one of his pieces Turner’s Chamber of Unlikely Delights, which sums up the whole set rather well.
