Thread of Light is the fifth collaboration since 2015 between the great Japanese pianist and improviser/composer Satoko Fujii, and the eclectic New York-born former Anthony Braxton double bassist and composer Joe Fonda – though the first in which they didn't actually meet. Their partnership was first imagined by German jazz programmer Wolfgang Gross, who brought them together after he had heard them in different bands at Westphalia's legendary Bunker Ulmenwall club – and Gross' liner note here accurately depicts the creativity of this lockdown-conceived album recorded separately in Japan and the US last year, when he describes their conjoined pandemic sensibilities as 'full of power and emotions reflecting anger, anxiety and sorrow as well as a way out of it with their inherent musical energy'.

All but two unaccompanied solos here were created as Fonda's subsequently improvised rejoinders to existing piano pieces by Fujii, but they sound uncannily like a real-time conversation. 'Kochi', the opener, quickly establishes the modus operandi, with Fonda's resonant long-tones sliding between Fujii's wide-spaced ascending ripples and softly dissonant chords. He races eagerly alongside her stomping low-end ostinato on 'Fallen Leaves Dance'; plucks woody, creaking accents against her under-the-lid sweeps across the soundboard on 'Reflection'; and chatters animatedly with her dancing, darting 'Anticipating', and splashy, impressionistic, Cecil Tayloresque 'Sekirei'.

Fonda plays dreamy flute on the vaporous 'Wind Sound', while his fast bowed passages on cello complete Fujii's tone-poem 'Between Blue Sky And Cold Water', a haunting highlight of a remarkable set.