Thomas Morgan is best known as a first-call bassist for a wide range of jazz and jazz-adjacent musicians, including Bill Frisell, Craig Taborn, Steve Coleman, Jakob Bro, and many more. But he has another side to him: that of programmer and computer game enthusiast. For Around You is a Forest (title taken from the first description in the game Adventure), Morgan invited some of his friends and colleagues to duet with WOODS, an algorithmic virtual stringed instrument of his own design – a project literally years in the making.
Morgan starts off the album by duetting with WOODS’ closest partner: himself. On the title track, his electronic instrument blips along like a cross between a mbira and a koto, as he lays his rock-solid groove and melodic improvisations on top. That sets the format for the rest of the cuts: WOODS presents a lattice of percussive, string-toned sounds, and the guests react to it. On “In the Dark,” Henry Threadgill layers flutes, duetting as much with himself as with Morgan’s electronics. Never one to do what’s expected of him, piano maestro Taborn adds lush electronic textures that challenge WOODS as much as compliment it on “Eddies.” Trumpet maverick Ambrose Akinmusire coaxes “Assembly of All Beings” into the ether by floating across the top of the structure. Fresh off his speedy rise to the top of the saxophone heap, Immanuel Wilkin takes “Murmuration” into another dimension with swirling sax lines that carry their own rhythm. Rhythm ace Dan Weiss brings the distinctive sound of the tabla to the WOODS party.
A pair of epics stand out on this journey. Over the course of sixteen minutes, drummer Gerald Cleaver rattles, brushes, and pounds over the crosshatch like the master of nailing a groove to free jazz he is. Frisell, meanwhile, blends a mix of acoustic and electric guitars into a tapestry that sits atop WOODS’ structure the way a blanket does a sheet, his fragile melodies and intricate textures emulating the work of Steve Tibbetts. Though coming from opposite ends of the aesthetic spectrum, these two long tracks really showcase the potential of Morgan’s vision: improvisation meets algorithm, with everything shaken down until it sings.
