After playing with Mingus, Coltrane, Lady Day, and Abbey Lincoln, inventive jazz pianist Mal Waldron moved to Europe and first reached Japan in 1970, where he met Idaho-born double-bassist Gary Peacock, who had played with Art Pepper, Bud Shank, Bill Evans, and free-jazz giant Albert Ayler before moving to Japan to study Zen Buddhism. First Encounter, recorded in Tokyo in 1971 for French producer Herve Bergerat, shows that the intense pairing was quite natural, the harmonic dissonance of Waldron's "She Walks in Beauty" contrasted by the up-tempo groove of Peacock's "What's That"; future Native Son founder Hiroshi Murakami makes an important contribution on drums.