Chris Forbes - Mountain Ocean Mirror Sky (2021)

Chris Forbes' music has enriched the New York jazz and improvising scene for some time, gracing the ensembles and recordings of Jason Hwang and Matt Lavelle, among so many others. He is simultaneously iconoclast and iconodule. His musical world is vast, as is evident on this, his first entirely solo piano album Mountain Ocean Mirror Sky. Each piece is its own realm of beauty and meaning - yet one is astonished to discover that each piece is entirely improvised. These resplendent, fully realized compositions did not exist before Chris sat down to record. Though few pianists have succeeded with such artist coherence and beauty in creating completely in the moment, the most obvious example being Keith Jarrett, the trajectory of Forbes' life and career have led inexorably to this. He would improvise even as a child while his formidable studies in classical composition and performance as well as his career in the jazz world all inform the proceedings on this recording. But it is the inner state of the improviser that guides the hands to the music that first exists in another world and brings it here.