2017 · Album
Highsmith
Recorded 2017 · Tzadik Records · Personnel: Craig Taborn (piano), Ikue Mori (prepared piano, electronics)
Two Pianists, One Conversation, No Walls
Taborn and Mori move like improvisers who have already agreed on everything without speaking.
By 2017, Craig Taborn had spent decades moving between worlds—inside the Vijay Iyer trio, leading his own projects, diving into prepared piano and noise. Highsmith is not a departure; it's a distillation. Paired with Ikue Mori, whose own practice spans classical training, analog synthesis, and free improvisation, Taborn finds something close to a mirror. The album feels less like a collaboration than a duet where both players are already fluent in the same language.
The record lives in sparse space. Piano and processed/prepared sounds orbit each other without collision. Taborn's touch is spare and considered—long silences matter as much as clusters of notes. Mori's contributions drift in and out, sometimes clarifying a harmonic idea, sometimes deliberately obscuring it. There is no rhythm section, no groove, no predetermined structure. This is pure listening and responding, the kind of work that reveals how much two musicians actually trust each other. Tracks move from near-silence into moments of real density, then back again.
What makes this matter is its refusal to compromise. This is chamber music for people who listen to free jazz and contemporary classical with equal seriousness. It sits naturally alongside Taborn's other recent work—the same intelligence, the same resistance to easy answers. If you come to it expecting the swinging energy of his trio dates or the density of his earlier solo records, you'll need to reset. But if you're willing to hear what Taborn and Mori are actually doing here, the rewards are real.
