Bone Bells is the third collaboration between pianist Sylvie Courvoisier and electric guitarist Mary Halvorson, two kindred spirits who continue to evolve their collective sound. Courvoisier has now begun writing the duet pieces specifically with Halvorson in mind. As in their previous works, this is clearly a split effort as the pianist composed four pieces and the guitarist the other four, alternating each from one track to the next. Here, the two appear on the Pyroclastic label for the second time, a label owned by pianist Kris Davis and dedicated to edgy music.
Courvoisier is a Brooklyn-based native of Switzerland who won Germany’s International Jazz Piano Prize in 2022. She brings the chamber music of her European roots to the grooving sounds of the avant-garde jazz scene in New York City and has a jazz trio with bassist Drew Gress and drummer Kenny Wollesen. She has released ten albums as a leader and appeared on over 50.
Halvorson is a celebrated guitarist and MacArthur fellow who earned rising star jazz artist and rising star composer of the year in recent Downbeat Critic Polls and much acclaim for her Nonesuch releases with her Amaryllis sextet, Amaryllis, Belladonna, and 2024 Cloudward; and before that with her Code Girl ensemble. Halvorson has a unique guitar style built on percussive picking and her expert use of pedals (distortion and pitch shifting) and loops. Her style is primarily jagged and off-kilter, and she often uses a string-skipping technique, all of which create unusual harmonics and textures.
The album begins with Halvorson’s title track, which consists of stately piano playing and highly melodic, though unpredictable, picking from the composer as each take turns spinning the bluesy melody and engaging in deep conversation. There is a resonant, mournful quality to the playing of each, commensurate with the title. Courvoisier’s “Esmeralda” is stormy and, at times, elegant. It’s named after a sculpture by the Dutch artist Cornelis Zitman. Just as you’re lulled by the calming passages, you’ll hear dissonant tweets from the piano’s upper register and then dense eruptions as the guitar and lower register piano keys merge and diverge into free expression. Halvorson responds with “Folded Secret,” built on a serpentine cyclical vamp with the guitar leads punctuated by Courvoisier’s prepared piano lines. The piece veers from straightforward to controlled chaos in places, as is the wont of these two, who are masterful in building drama. The pianist reveals her classical bent on “Nags Head Valse” which is in essence equivalent to the French term, danse macabre, “Dance of Death.”
Halvorson may be obsessed with the term ‘cloud’. Her “Beclouded” reveals both sides of the word as the two spirally soar and engage in fuzzy, hazy passages. In its obtuse way, this one also swings, with Courvoisier incredibly percussive in her attack. “Silly Walk” is a fragmented, angular piece by the pianist inspired by the famous Monty Python sketch and a series of grid-like sculptures by the Swiss artist Sophie Bouvier Auslander. In some respects, it’s like a modern-day Monk in its unpredictability, filled with trills and seemingly misplaced notes that leave one somewhere between awestruck and smiling. The two play both in unison and deliver ferocious improvisations on Halvorson’s rambling “Float Queens.” Courvoisier returns to her dramatic, dynamic, shape-shifting melodies and tempos on the closing “Cristellino e Lontano,” which embodies both dark and lighter tones and the colorful harmonics that only these two could conjure. The last stormy piano chord puts an exclamation point on the session.
With a running time of well under an hour, you can easily immerse yourself in this imaginative foray. Its ebbs and flows, the juxtaposition of the strident or haunting with the melodic and joyous, will captivate you.
