Like freestyling in rap, improvisation holds a justifiably rarefied place in jazz. In execution, it is the ultimate. It’s where the cream rises and shows its supremacy. Out on this cliff, both for better and for worse, there are no guardrails. With no plan or structure to hold you, you either show your shine or your ass. To those who excel in this gauntlet, all the respect goes.
As if that high-wire prospect wasn’t enough, the jeopardy more than doubles when you add another player into the mix. If the twosome aren’t good partners, the dance between even skilled players can devolve into the kind of free-jazz clatter that can make improv, at best, an esoteric exercise and, at worst, a punchline. It seems Orlando’s Marcos Morales understands this.
Morales is a jazz drummer and composer from Cuba whose sprawling work is released under the name Mercurio Sessions. Within the wide-ranging catalog, his Elfos series is dedicated to pure jazz improvisation. Since moving here three years ago, he’s continued not just his explorations but his judiciousness in collaborators. His most recent improv accomplices, like Flora Flora and Zach Muth, show he’s already tapped into the hottest, most bleeding-edge veins of Orlando jazz society.
For his latest edition of Elfos, Morales selected credentialed Orlando saxophonist Ryan Devlin, who proves himself an inspired and disciplined foil. Across Elfos Vol. 8’s six-track tête-à-tête, Devlin shows he’s a savvy tightrope walker with play that balances melody and skronk. Furthermore, he manages to match Morales’ restless, flashy percussion style without ever losing his center of gravity.
On “Saturn” and their tense take on the Nat King Cole standard “Nature Boy,” Devlin anchors the melodic line even in the storm of Morales’ technical mania. Athletic swingers “One Down, One Up” and “Bolivia” up the voltage with both revving in the same high gear. But it says everything that the most unchained tracks of “Impro I” and “Impro II” — where the two go wildest out on the extempore fringe, tethered to nothing but each other — are the most irrefutable exhibits of their chemistry.
The bottom line? Only that this mini-album is Marcos Morales’ best, most electrifying Orlando collab to date. It’s a knockout document of two stunningly simpatico players stoking lightning together. Elfos Vol. 8 now streams everywhere.
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This article appears in Oct. 28-Nov. 3, 2026.
