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Michael Bisio: Inimitable
by Karl Ackermann
Bassist and composer Michael Bisio has appeared on more than one hundred recordings, including numerous appearances with Tomas Ulrich, Ivo Perelman, Joe McPhee, and a regular partnership with Matthew Shipp. More than a dozen of his albums feature the bassist as a leader or co-leader but only one, Travel Music (Self-produced, 2011) has been a solo project. More than ten years on, Bisio returns to that format with Inimitable on the South Korean label, Mung Records. The album's ...
Continue ReadingMichael Bisio - Kirk Knuffke - Fred Lonberg-Holm: The Art Spirit
by Mark Corroto
If you thought Requiem For A New York Slice (Iluso Records, 2019) from bassist Michael Bisio, cornetist Kirk Knuffke, and cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm was a one-off recording, you were mistaken, and thankfully so. Interestingly enough, The Art Spirit was actually recorded a couple weeks before Requiem and it is the continuation of a beautiful relationship begun with the Bisio-Knuffke duo session Row For William O. (Relative Pitch Records, 2016). Housekeeping aside, these three musicians are making magic here.
Continue ReadingMichael Bisio / MMBC: MMBC Terma
by Karl Ackermann
Among the side effects of the 2020-2021 pandemic has been the rediscovery of misplaced resources. The trio MMBC dug up the fourteen-year-old recording MMBC Terma, a collection of nine group compositions and improvisations. MMBC is an acronym condensing the initials of the players. Tenor saxophonist (and psychoanalyst) Michael Monhart and drummer Ben Chadabe are lightly-recorded; acclaimed bassist-composer Michael Bisio rounds out the group and is best known for his work with Matthew Shipp. The chronologically ordered tracks reveal ...
Continue ReadingRich Halley: The Shape Of Things
by Hrayr Attarian
Accomplished saxophonist Rich Halley has an easily recognizable style which is marked with his brassy, rough-hewn tone, innovative ideas and simmering passion. After starting his own Pine Eagle label, in 2010, Halley added eleven stimulating albums to his discography, featuring bassist Clyde Reed and his son, drummer Carson Halley. In 2019 Halley started fronting the equally distinctive Matthew Shipp Trio. The fiery and captivating The Shape of Things is the quartet's second collaboration and expands on the themes explored on ...
Continue ReadingRich Halley: The Shape Of Things
by Troy Dostert
One thing is certain when approaching a Rich Halley recording: it's likely that you will hear the history of the saxophone in his playing. He's as capable of filling the room with fractured sound as he is in gently ruminating over a haunting phrase, and bop licks are as common as noisy abstraction on his albums; indeed, one might find all of these traits within the same piece. On his latest, The Shape of Things, he's fortunate to have the ...
Continue ReadingRich Halley, Matthew Shipp, Michael Bisio, Newman Taylor Baker: The Shape Of Things
by Karl Ackermann
In 2019, with almost two-dozen albums as a leader, Rich Halley broke his twenty-year streak of recording without a pianist as part of his various formations. It was Matthew Shipp who altered the saxophonist's course on Terra Incognita (Pine Eagle Records) which featured Shipp's trio with bassist Michael Bisio and drummer Newman Taylor Baker. That successful project leads to The Shape of Things, which picks up and moves forward from where that stimulating and satisfying album left off.
Continue ReadingAllen Shawn / Michael Bisio: Improvisations
by Mark Corroto
In this new world of fake news and alternative facts, you may like to challenge the title of pianist Allen Shawn and bassist Michael Bisio's Improvisations. This music is so properly presented, it has all the elements of composed music. To acknowledge these eight tracks as instant composing is sort of mind-blowing. Those immersed in the improvised jazz world will know Bisio's work in pianist Matthew Shipp's trio. Also in duo, Shipp/Bisio released the two excellent discs Floating ...
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