"The much-anticipated follow up to Mitchell's debut album Fiction (2013), the tour-de-force duo recording with longtime percussion counterpart Ches Smith. Oblong Aplomb not only takes the duo concepts initiated on Fiction to the absolute extreme, it also doubles in size, adding an entire disc with drummer Kate Gentile. Gentile is featured in duo with Mitchell on tracks 1-12 Oblong (disc 1), and Smith takes over on tracks 13-24 Aplomb (disc 2). Oblong Aplomb may also act as an unintentional anniversary celebration, marking 10 years since the release of Fiction, which in turn denotes 10 years since Mitchell exploded onto the NYC scene as a band leader. On the impact Mitchell has had since, Will Laymen wrote in PopMatters: "Mitchell is special [...] because he weaves together understanding of perhaps four distinct and critical jazz piano traditions, pulling in impressionistic texture from Bill Evans/Hancock, ravenous but dynamic attack from Cecil Taylor/Don Pullen, the rhythmic rushof Bud Powell, and the comfort with abstract melodic logic of Paul Bley. Does Mitchell, therefore, sound schizophrenic or derivative? No-over and over he sounds like himself: the most complete and well-integrated improvising pianist of the last 15 years." Before taking a deep dive into the forthcoming Oblong Aplomb, it might be helpful to review the origin story that birthed this duo project, as part of which Ches Smith played an absolutely crucial role. The following is excerpted from the press release for Fiction on Pi Recordings: "The pieces on Fiction were originally conceived by Mitchell to help him integrate composition with improvisation and to test the technical limits of his pianistic abilities. He started composing these pieces in 2010 just for himself little musical puzzles to worry over without much concern whether anyone besides himself would actually be able to play them [...] He started to use them to warm up before performances. As a joke that quickly became serious,drummer Ches Smith, also a member of Tim Berne's Snakeoil, would play along with the pieces during these warmups while the band was on tour. It wasn't long before Mitchell and Smith decided to work together with purpose on this knotty music, gradually adding varying improvisational approaches to each piece." This project has come a long way since 2013, and Mitchell and Smith have continued to develop and refine their approach to playing duo. Soon after meeting Matt in 2011 Kate Gentile became very interested in the etudes, spending considerable time studying and playing them. She even was present at the recording sessions for Fiction in December 2012. The musical connection between Mitchell and Gentile has developed into one of the most fruitful and distinct collaborations in creative improvised music today, having appeared together on Mitchell's A Pouting Grimace (2017) and Phalanx Ambassadors (2019), Gentile's Mannequins (2017) and in her new band Find Letter X, and their jointproject Snark Horse, who released a 6-disc set on Pi Recordings in 2021. In the liner notes to Oblong Aplomb, Mitchell makes it clear just how important each percussionist is to the project: "Kate, my closest musical and creative collaborator (and closest person) with whom I share more overlapping musical and aesthetic predilections than anyone I've ever known. Ches, without whom this and much of my recent music would have been inconceivable, and with whom I learned how to learn these pieces." So the musical connection heard here is obviously a deep one. And while they didn't pen any of the music themselves, both Smith and Gentile have made this music their own, each contributing their incomparable sounds and rhythmic approach that have firmly placed them in the vanguard of modern creative drummers. As for Mitchell, Oblong Aplomb is yet another pillar in a discography that, over the last 10 years, is unparalleled by any active artist in jazz and creative music today. And as his recentrecordings as a leader have leaned heavily on dense instrumentation to serve the compositions, Oblong Aplomb's return to the more bare bones duo approach firmly reminds the listener what an exceptional force he is as a pianist. There is quite frankly no one on the path he is forging with his recorded output, both as a composer and instrumentalist. If you need more proof, it's hard to imagine better company to keep than stated by NPR's Francis Davis: "Nearly 60 years after Ornette Coleman's The Shape Of Jazz To Come and exactly 50 since Roscoe Mitchell's Sound introduced the rest of the world to the Chicago AACM, the avant-garde can claim its own intelligentsia. [Vijay] Iyer, [Tyshawn] Sorey, [Craig] Taborn, Nicole Mitchell and Matt Mitchell are among its leaders, and Roscoe Mitchell...and even Steve Coleman...among its revered elders."-Out Of Your Head