Alcyona Mick and Tori Freestone
Criss Cross
(Whirlwind Recordings)

I WONDER if, when the sublime pianist Thelonious Monk recorded his tune Criss Cross on his eponymous album in February 1963, he would have imagined over half a century later that two Englishwomen would be playing it as a duo on the island of Tenerife.

“On rainy days we'd just pull out another Monk tune,” says south London saxophonist Tori Freestone about the genesis of this, her third album, on which she carves her notes on an exceptional instrument, the Fazioli Concert Grand.

Her pianist partner Alcyona Mick is from Dorset and has played alongside Arabic musicians like the English-Egyptian singer Natacha Atlas, violinist Samy Bishai and the French-Lebanese arch-trumpeter, Ibrahim Maalouf. “We like to accept the challenge of whatever is put in front of us,” says Freestone, “finding a new way of getting inside the music.”