In the first lockdown, Matthew Putman (on keyboard) and Michael Sarian (on trumpet and flugelhorn) began to meet up (with precautions) for semi-regular sessions in Sarian’s makeshift home studio. The conditions were less-than-ideal—a borrowed 20-year-old keyboard, an inadequate microphone, and cramped NYC apartment acoustics—but they continued their “weekly pilgrimages, searching for [their] cadences, rhythms and melodies through the Fall.” The sessions gave them much-needed sanity, grounding their friendship and keeping them afloat, as Sarian describes, “much like a lifeboat,” making a project that is exploratory and open-minded, full of searching and synchronicity. These three chapters represent three separate sessions recorded in a three-week time period. The album, A Lifeboat (Part I), is the duo’s debut on vinyl, following their 2020 project (Improvisations Volumes I & II), and precedes a second volume scheduled for later this year. Both the CD & LP editions feature poetry by 577’s Daniel Carter, and will be available April 23, 2021.