Listening to the greatest jazz duos can feel like eavesdropping on a true meeting of minds, a summit of ingenious imaginations in which each partner alternately engages, challenges, delights, drives, inspires, surprises and startles the other. Such is abundantly the case with Incantation, the arresting new album pairing multi-instrumentalist Caleb Wheeler Curtis and pianist Jason Moran.

Incantation features two contemporary jazz masters who bridge an expansive vision of the creative music tradition with a fearless urge to press ever forward into unmapped sonic territories. That history-encompassing spectrum of influences is on luminous display throughout the album, which features favorite compositions from both artists’ songbooks along with a pair of free improvisations, a new Curtis original and carefully chosen material from both peers and forebears.

The title of Incantation is an inadvertent echo of Curtis’ acclaimed recent sextet album Ritual, both suggesting a ceremonial aspect tapping into the music’s spiritual
continuum. “In a sense, this music is a call to the ancestors,” Curtis explains. “I am very grateful to the musicians that left all this music for us. It's just not possible to play without invoking them. Our teachers and the people that we admire live inside of the tunes. It's the greatest honor I can imagine to participate in the same story as Thelonious Monk and Eric Dolphy, Johnny Hodges and Duke Ellington, Cannonball Adderley and Jaki Byard, Orrin Evans and Jason Moran.”

The last time that Curtis and Moran stepped into the studio together, to record the 2018 postmodern Charlie Parker tribute Freebird, it wasn’t on quite such an equal footing. Moran was the marquee name, an established star in the jazz pantheon, appearing as a special guest with Curtis and the other members of Walking Distance, an up-and-coming collective quartet recording just their second album. The results were exhilarating, acclaimed among the 20 best jazz albums of the year by The New York Times.

The pair also embark on a pair of improvised pieces, the tumultuous and angular “One Hundred Years” and the stark “Archaeology.” The latter features Curtis on trumpet, a relatively new endeavor that reveals his willingness to work without a net. “The first place I started to play trumpet was with Ember, because we had created an environment where failure was an acceptable option,” he says. “Playing duo with Jason is a very sensitive and vulnerable musical environment, magnifying every
choice, so I spent nearly the whole session looking at the trumpet on the stand, wondering when I would find the moment to step through the door of fear.  ‘Archaeology’ was the last thing we recorded, and I’m proud of how it came out.”