Temporary Kings

Pianist Ethan Iverson and tenor saxophonist Mark Turner have a bond going back to the New York clubs of the ’90s, which incubated the current generation of jazz masters. They went on to major success, both individually and as members of the venerated Billy Hart Quartet. An Iverson-Turner duo project had long been in the works, and the lustrous sound couldn’t be more ideal for music of such depth and intimacy. The six Iverson pieces, including the solo piano meditation “Yesterday’s Bouquet,” are full of forbidding harmony, often approaching contemporary chamber music (true of Turner’s closing “Seven Points” as well). But the pulse of jazz is vividly present in Iverson’s abstracted blues on “Unclaimed Freight”; in “Dixie’s Dilemma” by the late Warne Marsh, a key Turner influence; and in Turner’s workhorse “Myron’s World,” honed here to its essence.