In the summer of 2019 the California-based pianist-composer Myra Melford formed an all-female quintet to perform music she’d written in response to a series of 10 drawings by the twentieth-century abstract American artist Cy Twombly. For the Love of Fire and Water is the title of the album as well as the artwork and it’s just the latest mixed media project, including her excellent recent left-field chamber quintet Snowy Egret, that featured the sadly now departed cornetist Ron Miles. But her compositions this time are largely built on the bare bones of text-directed improvisation rather than written themes for a mostly New York-based A-list leftfield personnel who are well-acquainted with each other’s approach. The improvisations themselves are full of character individually and a witty interaction collectively achieving an organic evolution alongside Melford’s vibrant singular vocabulary of angular dance-like motifs, hypnotic earthy vamps and Cecil Taylor-like percussive splashes among her other expressive resources. The pulsating modal written theme at ‘II’ over a grinding piano bass motif is brought back for IX and the elegiac song-like final track ‘X’ demonstrates that a collective sonority though more elusive than conventional harmony can touch hearts just the same.