Ada Rave & Marta Warelis: Peel/Mondo

On Peel/Mondo, two distinctive voices sport in adventurous communion. Polish pianist Marta Warelis and Argentinean saxophonist Ada Rave first met as part of the fertile Amsterdam scene. As a result, they know each other well, so the empathy and highly attuned responsiveness they display on these six collective inventions from a 2024 concert performance comes as little surprise.

Rave's singular approach has graced outfits as diverse as the Kaja Draksler Octet, all-women supergroup Hearth and venerable Dutch punk rockers The Ex. In her mix of unorthodox tonality and finely etched poise, she recalls a less rhythmically orientated Ingrid Laubrock. She revels in sound, her note-making favors nuance over the obvious. She shares that characteristic with the pianist. Warelis exorcises unexpected timbres from her instrument: clanks, rattles, and taps, which she assembles into persuasive arguments. Her flair has led to a widening sphere of collaborations, including a sojourn with as renowned a talent-spotter as trumpeter Dave Douglas.

Warelis often seems most at ease in ensemble settings. In this duet format, she tends to a continuous shifting bed of sound, as epitomized in the opening title cut. Detuned piano gambits underscore plaintive soprano saxophone, before ascending into an exuberant swirl of shrill whistles and treble register tinklings. One trait pervades the set: However far out the noises they create, they always affirm a connection—a sense of a conversation taking place—whether in the jagged momentum and helter skelter dash of "First Strawberries" or the terse textural gestures of "Rain Into Flood."

At times they foreground listening itself. Case in point, "In The Capricious Garden," where Warelis' clattering phrases underpin Rave's wavering exclamations, before a pause and a reset. A sudden chime curtails a series of rippling piano motifs, signaling Rave's adoption of resonant metal objects in place of reed. In answer, the pianist waxes almost melodic before instigating a succession of reverberant waves, spiked by percussive crashes. It provides as telling an example as any of the unpredictable trajectories they pursue, and the successful outcomes they generate.

While the 36-minute runtime surely left the audience wanting more, it yields taut exchanges of rare attentiveness that more than compensate for the limited duration.