Jazzers (or jazz commentators at any rate) like to talk about empathy between players: that instinctual feeling musicians have for one another's means and modes in improvising (and more composed) situations. As Mads Vinding's liner note suggests here: the pianist and percussionist in this particular trio had never played before starting in on this session. So whatever empathy they might prove to have wouldn't be the result of long experience of one another's strengths and foibles (if such there be). And they wouldn't be able to take much of a cue from the tunes either, since, with the exception of Sammy Fein's ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and Guy Wood's ‘My One and Only Love’, the music – split into two suites – is all improvised. So it's real jazz, then, old-fashioned and avant-garde at the same time, and it's a pleasure to discover the feeling American-Danish percussionist Marilyn Mazur and French pianist Jean-Michel Pilc, despite not having shared a session before, prove to have for one another's playing. In that same note, Vinding quotes Arnold Schoenberg, ‘composing is improvisation slowed down’, and concludes: ‘This album is composition in realtime’. And who could complain about that?