Vijay Iyer/Craig Taborn
Transitory Poems
(ECM Records)
★★★

BIG names in the world of contemporary jazz in their own right, US composers Vijay Iyer and Craig Taborn have come to together for this unusual album, an instrumental live concert at the Liszt Academy in Budapest where they duet on two pianos.

Described as “a series of homages” in the inlay notes, several songs are dedicated to recently deceased artists including pianists Cecil Taylor and Muhal Richard Abrams and painter and sculptor Jack Whitten.

While some jazz music is often dismissed as “easy listening,” Transitory Poems is very far from this, with opening track Life Line (Seven Tensions) a challenging and dissonant aural assault.