Sylvie Courvoisier Mary Halvorson: Bone Bells

Guitarist and sound-chaser Mary Halvorsonnever fails to hypnotize. Add the equally hypnotic pianist Sylvie Courvoisier and beauties like Bone Bells materialize to shift your news-exhausted consciousness to greater possibilities. Bone Bells does that. Bone Bells does it often.

Once again each woman is determined to investigate every tangent of the sonic atmosphere. Willfully and excitedly breaks down the margins of contemporary chamber and avant-garde, Courvoisier (who gets along rather well with many musical mavericks, notably Wadada Leo Smith and Andrew Cyrille) , and the MacArthur Fellowship awardee Halvorson create with a stark humor both as solo creators and willing collaborators. 

Akin to 2017's Crop Circles (Relative Pitch) and the duo's 2021 Pyroclastic debut Searching for the Disappeared Hour  Courvoisier and Halvorson set the trance from the very start via Halvorson's plaintive title track: A lulling ballad that Courvoisier tries to wreak havoc on but can't pull her collaborator from the blues. Which she sure does with "Esmerelda" a high-powered flamenco that makes Halvorson dance. Like a piano roll ragtime, "Nags Head Valse"  bumps and bounces. A flirty little thing.

"Silly Walks" is a great title for a track that kicks and screams. Slipping mirage-like on Courvoisier's classical yearnings, "Float Queens" knots what it unravels. "Beclouded" becomes a free jazz trad fugue in Courvoisier's hands that not only breaks the clouds it puts Heaven on call. Sworn to push the explorer's edge, the pianist's vamping "Cristellina e Lontano"—an eight-note piano phrase going toe to toe against Halvorson's cumulus-like meter—bears little resemblance to anything before it, be it within the duo's or the soloist's expansive reps. Resisting the siren lure of past triumphs is never easy for most. Most gratefully Halvorson and Courvoisier are nothing like the rest of us.

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