For those unaware, throughout her life in music, the pianist and keyboardist Myra Melford has pursued a creative vision that is both wholly distinctive and all-embracing. Composition and improvisation interact seamlessly and ingeniously in her work, one side strengthening the other.

Guided by that same compelling spirit, divergent idioms and eras coalesce—from jazz, blues and global folk styles to various corners of the classical tradition and the avant-garde. Extramusical influences—for instance, the poetry of Rumi or the spirituality of Indian meditation, yoga and the Huichol Indians of Mexico—have also figured into the mix.

In the end, Melford’s efforts are probably best served by labels like “contemporary music,” “new music” and other tags that signify artistic freedom and daring more than any boundaries of genre.

Pianist and composer Satoko Fujii, “an improviser of rumbling intensity and generous restraint” (Giovanni Russonello, New York Times), is one of the most original voices in jazz today. For more than 25 years, she has created a unique, personal music that spans many genres, blending jazz, contemporary classical, rock, and traditional Japanese music into an innovative synthesis instantly recognizable as hers alone.

“Fujii’s music troubles the divide between abstraction and realism. All of this amounts to abstract expressionism, in musical form. But it’s equaled by her rich sense of simplicity, sprung from the feeling that she is simply converting the riches of the world around her into music,” writes Giovanni Russonello in the New York Times.

The title of their new album かたらひ [Katarahi] was suggested by Fujii. It is a Japanese word meaning a heart-to-heart conversation between intimate friends. Indeed, Melford and Fujii share a history together that is longer than their recordings might indicate. かたらひ [Katarahi] is just their second album as a duo, after their 2007 debut, Under the Water [Libra]. Two albums in nearly twenty years might make it seem like this is a rare event, but such is not the case.

For Fujii was a student at New England Conservatory studying with Paul Bley in 1994 when he introduced her to Melford at a Melford solo concert in Boston. They have maintained a friendship over the years since then.

1. Interlude I
2. Signpost
3. Pairs
4. Chalk
5. Kaiwa
6. IV
7. From Sometime

Captured live at the Jazz Festival in Leibnitz and on what is a deeply intimate and yet expansively welcoming new recording, the duo open on the emotively sculpted Interlude I and then we are gifted the absorbing Signpost, an impassioned Pairs, a shared affinity for the craft threaded throughout Chalk, before the set rounds out on the affecting Kaiwa, the stirring IV, coming to an all-too-soon close on the gracefully finespun From Sometime.

www.myramelford.com