For those unaware, Horizons marks the 11th Alex Sipiagin and Chris Potter pairing on a Sipiagin-led date since Images, his 1997 debut and only 20th century album.

They’d met a few years earlier at informal workshop sessions with youngish, New York-based forward thinkers, now luminaries, like Dave Binney, Donny McCaslin, Adam Rogers and Scott Colley.

Both played in the Mingus Band, which Sipiagin joined in 1995 on Randy Brecker’s recommendation. “Chris likes risk,” Sipiagin says. “He’s always unpredictable. He goes so many different directions. When I write music with him in mind, I’m trying to be the same. I hear what he might do, though it isn’t necessarily the same thing I was thinking of. He was very encouraging when I started writing compositions and arrangements. He told me, “Try to do something. From playing with the Mingus Band and listening to Binney, you’ll know what to do. You’ll hear what’s right and what’s wrong.”

Similarly, Sipiagin admires Escreet’s florid, daring creativity and intense work ethic. He first recruited the London-born keyboardist for Balance 38-58, after hearing him in a Binney-led band with Brewer and Dan Weiss. For this occasion, Sipiagin deploys Escreet’s formidable arsenal of bespoke sounds on overdubbed synth lines that emulate a third horn, while leaving him room to express a broad emotional template when soloing.

He encountered Brewer in the late ’00s on gigs with Gonzalo Rubalcaba, before bringing the eminent bassist onto Balance 38-58. “I don’t have to explain anything to Matt – or anyone else in this band,” Sipiagin says. “I just write the music. We know what to expect from each other – and there are unexpected surprises, where the music turns from one color to another, or the energy changes.”

When conceiving Horizons, Sipiagin was “dreaming exactly about Eric Harland’s sound and mine.” Their simpatico developed in several early 2000s bands led by Dave Holland, another mentor who deeply influenced Sipiagin’s compositional ideas. “Eric has a special sensitivity,” Sipiagin says. “He feels you in advance. He contacted me several times before the recording with questions about the music.”

1. While You Weren’t Looking
2. Overseen
3. Clean Cut
4. Jumping Ahead
5. When Is It Now
6. Lost
7. Horizon 1
8. Horizon 2
9. Horizon 3
10. AIVA-tion

This dutifully-hued new recording opens on the euphoric While You Weren’t Looking and the languishing beauty found within Overseen and then we get the more stridently sculpted Clean Cut, the delicately jaunty Jumping Ahead and the low slung balladry of When Is It Now?

Along next is the flirtatious grooved Lost and that is in turned backed by the glistening Horizon 1, the deeply ambient Horizon 2, the stoically-charged Horizon 3, the recording closing on the smoothly flourishing AIVA-tion.

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