"Defiant Life" - the second duo recording by Vijay Iyer and Wadada Leo Smith for ECM - is a profound meditation on the human condition and the suffering and resilience that comes with it. Between Leo Smith's unmistakable trumpet howls and Vijay's textured keystrokes on piano and Fender Rhodes, an ethereal shimmer shimmers, creating multidimensional spaces of thoughtful musical conversation. "We work with our individual languages and materials," writes Vijay in his detailed accompanying booklet, "but also with our methods of acoustic attunement and what I would call a shared aesthetic of necessity." A necessity that is both urgent and peaceful, ominous in the opening longtrack 'Sumud', then clothed in bluesy undertones in 'Floating River Requiem', still dubious but with silver linings on 'Elegy: The Pilgrimage' and shatteringly beautiful in the closing 'Procession: Defiant Life'. If the album is a contemplation on life as such, then it is his sense of wonder that is on full display here. "Defiant Life" was recorded in two days at the Auditorio Stelio Molo in Lugano and produced by Manfred Eicher. This recording session was characterized by "our continuing grief and outrage at the atrocities of the past year, but also by our belief in human possibility". - Vijay Iyer