The tributaries from Miles’s fabled 1970s period spread ever further.

NEA Jazz Masters drummer Billy Hart and soprano saxophonist Dave Liebman met during the recording of Davis’s On The Corner (1972) and have played together many times since, most notably in Quest.

Now they’ve teamed up with percussionist/keyboardist Adam Rudolph for the powerful, semi-improvised album Beingness.

Mainly recorded over two nights during spring 2023 at The Stone, NYC (a gig actually intended not for Hart but for Tyshawn Sorey, who couldn’t attend), with copious overdubs, edits and sound massaging by Rudolph at a later date, it offers something new under the jazz sun.

The spontaneously-composed material on Beingness suggests the vast soundscape of a lost continent, maybe coming nearer to Pangaea or Panthalassa than Miles ever got. It’s truly the music of ‘the ancestors’, whilst never losing its ties to jazz: Liebman consistently conjures up powerful melodies from nowhere (with occasional unmistakable but maybe unintended nods to ‘Bitches Brew’), while Hart and Rudolph’s percussion dialogues ebb and flow.

Apparently Rudolph employed some electronic processing ‘live’ on the gig courtesy of an on-stage mixer and sampler, and it was Liebman who encouraged him to take the tapes away and do some more and also add keyboards, gongs, thumb piano and keyboards.

The result is a modern classic and sonic treat – mixer/masterer James Dellatacoma deserves a lot of credit too. Who would guess that Hart (at 84 years old) and Liebman (78) would make such magical music at this stage of the game. Highly recommended.