CD review: Vijay Iyer & Craig Taborn – The Transitory Poems 2019: Video, CD cover

Vijay Iyer and Craig Taborn, two of creative music’s most iconoclastic players, first learned to meld and mesh their artistic approaches in Roscoe Mitchell’s Note Factory ensemble (as documented on Mitchell’s 2007 recording Far Side).

Since then, Iyer and Taborn have continued to play duo concerts together, beginning in early 2009 at The Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ and several times since, the world over.

The Transitory Poems, recorded live at the Franz Liszt Academy, Budapest in March 2018, is their first duo album. A marvel of shared invention, it incorporates pieces offered as tributes to their common formative influences including pianists Cecil Taylor, Muhal Richard Abrams and Geri Allen, and the painter and sculptor Jack Whitten.

1. Life Line (seven tensions)
2. Sensorium
3. Kairòs
4. S.H.A.R.D.S
5. Shake Down
6. Clear Monolith
7. Luminous Brew
8. Meshwork / Libation / When Kabuya Dances

Vijay Iyer – Piano
Craig Taborn – Piano

Full album free download