In the first lockdown, Matthew Putman (on keyboard) and Michael Sarian (on trumpet and flugelhorn) began to meet up (with precautions) for semi-regular sessions in Sarian’s makeshift home studio. The conditions were less-than-ideal—a borrowed 20-year-old keyboard, an inadequate microphone, and cramped NYC apartment acoustics—but they continued their “weekly pilgrimages, searching for [their] cadences, rhythms and melodies through the Fall.” The sessions gave them much-needed sanity, grounding their friendship and keeping them afloat, as Sarian describes, “much like a lifeboat,” making a project that is exploratory and open-minded, full of searching and synchronicity.
