Nine years ago, jazz greats Vijay Iyer and Wadada Leo Smith joined forces to release the collaborative album A Cosmic Rhythm With Each Stroke. Both of them have done plenty of big things since then, and now they’re back together on another LP. Next month, they’ll release their new collaboration Defiant Life. Iyer says that the record “was conditioned by our ongoing sorrow and outrage over the past year’s cruelties, but also by our faith in human possibility.”