For You I Don't Want To Go

Within the same year that cornet player Kirk Knuffke released the stellar two CD-set of Gravity Without Airs (TAO Forms) with pianist Matthew Shipp and bassist Michael Bisio, he has also issued For You I Don’t Want To Go, a duo recording with Bisio as remarkably sustained as it is spare. The album consists of a single continuous 37-minute track, “For You I Don’t Want to Go/ Sea Vamp”, which Knuffke describes beginning as “an open improvisation” in which the musicians “worked our way into my piece ‘For You I Don’t Want To Go’ and worked our way out of it. Then we morphed into Michael’s piece, ‘Sea Vamp’.”

The piece begins meditatively, a few bass notes introducing barely-voiced cornet, air mixing with sound in a kind of mutation of brass, one tone blurring into another in a way suggesting the plaintive interiority of a shakuhachi. The tempo picks up and Knuffke mounts a sparkling, register-spanning lead against Bisio’s rapid propulsion, almost as if roused from lament. Even here, though, Knuffke will fasten briefly on a couple of high notes, returning to that keening mutated sound, mining emotional nuance. Throughout, the musicians move in and out of themes, deftly shifting tempos and mood and creating surprising variety, whether it is Knuffke’s shift to sharply-pinched sounds and muffled half-valves or Bisio’s horn-like articulation when playing arco. If one may imagine such a piece, with both working within relatively conventional techniques as sparse (Knuffke’s timbral shifts are subtle and complex but largely monodic), it is not. Its essential characteristics are clarity and directness, virtuoso interaction without ever becoming mere display.

Franpi Barriaux - Citizen Jazz

A fence and a garden. A familiar place, as you might expect, a simple place where it's good to play. This is the setting offered by double bassist Michael Bisio and cornetist Kirk Knuffke for their duet released on the Lithuanian label No Business. A free moment, without a framework, as unique as the piece that gives its title to the album, "For You I Don't Wanna Go". A moment of complicity that must be put into perspective with Gravity Without Airs, their latest trio album with Matthew Shipp. A long discussion between the two friends, it allows us above all to rediscover forms of playing that characterize both Bisio and Knuffke. The double bassist in particular, whose pizzicati playing is both fast and without excessive virtuosity. As we know, in most of his interventions, Bisio is an apostle of simplicity. When he escapes with his instrument, it is to create rhythms, races on the strings that never sacrifice musicality.

Knuffke's playing is very broad. He plays with his companion in a very broad manner, especially when the latter uses the bow. We understood this in his interview : the relationship with his cornet is above all a relationship with singing; precisely when Bisio is at the bow, there is a different scansion, something that is reminiscent of romance. We had noted in the trio a very graceful approach to improvisation. It is confirmed here. Beyond listening and the obvious complicity, we perceive in the musicians a desire for gentleness, a very caressing approach. Thus, when Bisio returns to the pizzicato, in an ostinato as light as air, it is Knuffke who changes register and leads the subtle little mechanics of the discussion. Without ever seeking to destabilize the other. This is not the first duo of Kirk Knuffke and Michael Bisio. Here, it is with relaxation and immediate sympathy that we penetrate what links the two artists. A beautiful story written by musicians who count.