Temporary Kings

Mark Turner tenor saxophone
Ethan Iverson piano
Recorded June 2017, Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI, Lugano
Engineer: Stefano Amerio
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: September 7, 2018

Following two appearances on ECM as part of the Billy Hart Quartet, saxophonist Mark Turner and pianist Ethan Iverson return to the fold as a duo. Their speculative blend of chamber jazz is a nod to the Lennie Tristano/Warne Marsh school, yet every listen reveals layers of spontaneous design.

Marsh’s own “Dixie’s Dilemma” is a thematic centerpiece, which in its present form feels like a jazz message shot into space, scrambled by the universe and dropped back through the Earth’s atmosphere with exacting lyricism. The lion’s share of credit, though, goes to Iverson, who penned six of the album’s nine selections. Set opener “Lugano” is an ode to the place of its recording as well as the state of mind it conveys. It’s a feeling that could exist nowhere and nowhen else and finds Turner’s tone, fleshier than ever, sprouting wings from the spine of an aching altissimo. The title tune and darker “Third Familiar” are soundtracks of the soul while the tighter knots of “Turner’s Chamber of Unlikely Delights” unravel with playful extroversion. Against the cloudy backdrop of “Yesterday’s Bouquet,” a piano solo oozing with remembrance, the bluesier “Unclaimed Freight” puts a spirited ice cube in the cocktail. Turner’s contributions, for their part, constitute a binary star of personal expression. Where “Myron’s World” is a masterfully realized tangle of associations given credence by the profundity of their grammar, “Seven Points” is the album’s creative apex. Its balance between focus and surrender is indicative of open communication. Turner navigates every change of direction and terrain with eyes closed and heart open, yielding massive returns from investments of experience.

Although the musicians were recorded in the same room, they seem to inhabit their own planetary orbits. Bound by the gravitation of a serious whimsy, they finish each other’s sentences even as they begin to cast new lines into the galactic pond on which they’ve anchored their boat for an hour’s duration. And while their kingship may be temporary, whatever they’re tapping into is anything but.

(This review originally appeared in the September 2018 issue of The New York City Jazz Record, a full PDF of which is available here.)