Since 1966 the SWR NEWJazz Meeting, the legendary sound laboratory for improvised music brings together musicians so that they can develop their creative ideas free from the constraints of daily business. For four days, this arrangement creates a free space for experimentation, with the aim of developing a concert programme that is then presented on a tour throughout the broadcasting area.

Micah Thomas is a visionary among the pianists of the current New York improvisation scene. He became famous as the alert, energetic piano engine of the Immanuel Wilkins Quartet. As curator of the 2022 SWR NEWJazz Meeting, Thomas put together a band of outstanding NewnYork improvisers. The sextet never played together in this form before. When asked about a name for the SWR NewJazz Meeting project, Thomas said: Forest. The musical fruits of this album in fact shimmer like a dew-covered forest landscape that extends much farther than a single glance could take in. And in this "forest" something magical happens: it is dark, calm and quiet, and then suddenly, for a moment, rare, shy animals appear out of the mist and fog. These tracks, selected subsequently by Thomas, offer such experiences. They are deliberately identified as fragments, highlights from long spontaneous improvisatory passages.