Having come to know Keith Jarrett primarily through his amazing improvisational skills and classical interpretations, this recording is my first encounter with him as a composer. On the one hand, I feel that writing Jarrett down somehow limits his potential (note, for example, his understandably longstanding reluctance to release a scored version of the lauded Cologne Concerto). On the other hand, Jan Garbarek has so much freedom on the icy terrain he is deployed on this recording that he can channel Jarrett's essence to the full. It's hard to imagine Jarrett's music being any other way. Each work for soloist and orchestra can be likened to a conversation in which the soloist introduces themes that the soloist must "verbally" process. At some point during the recording process, this dialectical relationship begins to take on a life of its own. But when you listen to Jarrett's compositions, you don't experience a conversation, but a transformation, a transfiguration in real time, in which the music implodes rather than expands. Garbarek does not interact with the orchestra, but traverses it, raising and lowering his weighted feet over the rosin-dusted surface. If there is a dialog here, it is exclusively internal. "Numinor" makes its way into the listener's field of vision, over which Garbarek draws a series of jagged constellations with melancholy reed work. The orchestra sometimes bleeds as if it were a cloth cut by the edges of these gloomy observations. Garbarek screams with his instrument, which he treats like an extension of his voice, articulating syllables instead of notes through the placement of his fingers. Even when we can't make out the language, something intelligible comes through. Despite some inspired solo passages, the music remains resolutely horizontal: every step forward is countered by a step to the side. There is, however, an incredibly moving scene in the final passage of 'Windsong', where the saxophone melts into its surroundings and shares an intimate moment of continuity, made all the sweeter by its unexpected cessation. The title track, which closes the record, is playful and romantic, meandering through three-part signposts. The mood is contradictory, with Garbarek conducting two completely different dialogs that seem like one. Overall, I find Luminessence a challenge to listen to. Not because the music is particularly modernist, but because Jarrett makes the often hidden dynamics of authorship that we take for granted so visible. As someone who constantly expands the notion of musicality in everything he touches, Jarrett provides us here with a blunt document of the compositional process. It's the audible equivalent of looking into the master's sketchbook. I also find that despite its glowing title, this album is quite dark, like a hidden shadow beneath the unopened page. It's an album that erases as many words as it inscribes, a memory book made up of images rather than prose. All of which makes it an effective, if flimsy, project. There are very few motifs, and that's liberating, because you're not subjected to the often-dominant recapitulation or the subordination of secondary themes. The notes are sustained in a way they could not be sustained before, and end as abruptly as they began. This process illustrates the clever wordplay of the title, a symbiosis of color and opaque desire.