Jazz
Mahakala Music · 6 September 2026
“Ash” opens the record with an alto lament answered by a piano figure that carries itself like a hymn. Chad Fowler wrote it in the days after his father died, and it is one of only two composed pieces among the eight.
The other is the title track: Johnny Burke and Jimmy Van Heusen’s “Polkadots & Moonbeams”, the song played at Fowler’s wedding almost thirty years ago. The duo stretches it until the ballroom step of the original settles into a quiet sway. Everything between those two poles — six improvisations — went untouched by discussion, rehearsal or arrangement: the whole session was taped on 20 December 2024 at Park West Studios in Brooklyn, with Jim Clouse at the desk.
Eri Yamamoto has been a fixture of the New York scene for three decades (her own trio, years of work with William Parker) and here she plays almost entirely beneath Fowler’s line, clearing room for him rather than backing him. On “The Things We’ll Miss”, nearly seven minutes, Fowler sets down the saxophone for flute and the piano thins to long, widely spaced chords. It’s the track where the conversation holds best: neither player wants the last word.
“Russian Dragon” is where the programme tips. Four and three-quarter minutes of acrobatics dropped between “When You Die You Become Sentient Energy” and “The Things We’ll Miss”, with the change of tone arriving unannounced. Of the six improvisations, it’s the only one that sounds recorded for a different album.
Eight tracks, forty-three minutes, recorded, mixed and mastered by Clouse. It’s out on Mahakala Music, the label Fowler has run since 2019 with drummer Steve Hirsh, and which had already documented the pair inside larger groups: Yamamoto’s Sparks Quartet and Quadraphonic.
Rating: 7.5/10
Text by Aina Torrents