Kirk Knuffke Trio - Gravity Without Airs

Label: TAO Forms Records, 2022

Personnel - Kirk Knuffke: cornet; Matthew Shipp: piano; Michael Bisio: bass.

Prescinding of drums, the avant-garde cornetist Kirk Knuffke is in very good hands while teaming up with two magnificent explorers from a different generation who have been recording extensively together for years now: pianist Matthew Shipp and bassist Michael Bisio. If the former played with Knuffke for the very first time here, then the latter was featured alongside him in both duo and trio (with cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm) configurations. The program chosen for this double disc CD includes six Knuffke compositions and eight improvised numbers. 

Knuffke’s “Gravity Without Airs”, whose title was taken from Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, opens this recording of the same name with epic chordal movements, digging-deep bass sounds and mesmerizing cornet melodies delivered with impressive tonal range and intervallic elasticity. The players are definitely at the top of their game here, and the grandiosity of their musical imagination is used every second of the tune’s 11:37 minutes to astonish. The album is stronger when it comes to twisty revelations, and this piece, out of nowhere, takes us to staggering rhythms as well as invigorating motions and struts. 

His creative opus proceeds with the improvisation “Stars Go Up”, which, without being explicitly dark, immerses us into a pool of mystery filled with lyrical maturity. Knuffke’s pitched screams clash with the spasmodic contortions of the rhythm section, just like in the modal “The Water Will Win”, an openwork of perplexity and liberation.

“Between Today and May”, a non-cloying ballad written by the bandleader, feels more spiritual than physical, exhibiting beautifully haunting bowed bass and tender piano melodicism. If Bisio sounds fabulous at every pluck of the string in “Birds of Passage”, then Shipp never hesitates in his articulation of cadenced hammered piano clusters whose locomotion winds down progressively. 

Knuffke never fails to generate ideas, stimulated by the groundwork force from his two associates. That fact is perceptible on “Heal the Roses”, where they hit peaks and valleys, full of prep with taut exchanges between cornet and piano. “Shadows to Dance”, for example, plunges into a pleasant reverie but then switches gears, embracing something murkier and menacing for the most of its duration. “Today For Today”, another composition by the cornetist, ends the record with subtle liquid phrasing - more like Chet Baker than Don Cherry - over a palpable and beautiful texture. 

The possibilities of the material are vast and the trio constantly catches and opens our ears with sublime excursions marked by cohesiveness and expansiveness. Gravity Without Airs is a highlight in Knuffke's discography.

Favorite Tracks: 
01 - Gravity Without Airs ► 02 - Stars Go Up ► 03 - Between Today and May ► 08 - The Water Will Win 

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Michael Bisio / Kirk Knuffke / Fred Lonberg-Holm - The Art Spirit

Label: ESP-Disk, 2021

Personnel - Michael Bisio: acoustic bass; Kirk Knuffke: cornet; Fred Lonberg-Holm: cello, electronics.

Bassist Michael Bisio, cornetist Kirk Knuffke and cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm anchor a trio project that lives from improvisation. The Art Spirit, now out on the ESP-Disk label, is the follow up to Requiem For A New York Slice (Iluso Records, 2019). The music was inspired by the American painter Robert Henri, one of the organizers of a landmark show called ‘The Eight’, and consists of three Bisio compositions and five collective improvisations.

Besides leading their own groups, the members of this trio have been essential to many other groups and projects. The New York bassist has been working alongside Joe McPhee, Matthew Shipp and Ivo Perelman; the Colorado-born cornetist enriches the sound of Michael Formanek’s Ensemble Kolossus, Matt Wilson Quartet and, more recently, James Brandon Lewis’ Red Lily Quintet; while the Chicagoan cellist worked with Peter Brötzmann, Steve Swell and the amazing avant-jazz unit Vandermark 5.

“Not a Souvenir of Yesterday”, the opening track and first improvisation to appear on the album, has weighty bass lines meshing with incisive cello threads, creating a perfectly audible convolution that swings while letting the cornetist loose on it. 

Other improvised phenomenons that caught my ear are “Both Keys Belong to You” and “Like Your Work As Much As”. On the former, the trio sculpts and paints with impressionistic ostinatos, free rambles and buzzing drones, with the ending sounding much like a written theme statement in which Knuffke has the word. The latter tune, on the other hand, plunges straight into a swinging flow that inspires not only Knuffke - who boasts exact phrasing, snappy articulations and extended technique - but also a fantastic integration of electronics devised by Lonberg-Holm.

Bisio’s compositions encompass several moods, and if “R.henri” combines bowed strings and cornet cries to express a flow of mournful vulnerability, then “Orange Moon Yellow Field” gives the impression of amorphousness through an offbeat interlocking of the instruments. “Things Hum” presents a pizzicato dance of bass and cello for a start, and then, on a constant drive, finds space for a chamber section twisted by bowed strings and muted cornet.

Some invocations are catchier than others, but in this bubbling modern creative stew there’s a lot of abstraction and clarification as well as tension and release to keep you tuned.

Grade B

Favorite Tracks:
01- Not a Souvenir of Yesterday ► 06 - Things Hum ► 07 - Like Your Work As Much As

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Kirk Knuffke - Cherryco

Label: SteepleChase Records, 2017

Lineup – Kirk Knuffke: cornet; Jay Anderson: bass; Adam Nussbaum: drums.

// this review was originally published on LondonJazz News on Jun 12 //

"Cherry-co" was the title of a tune by Don Cherry, which first appeared on the 1966 album The Avant Garde, a revolutionary piece of work jointly authored by Cherry and John Coltrane. The title, was in part a punning reference to the jazz standard "Cherokee", in part a conflation of Cherry and Co(ltrane). 

Kirk Knuffke, the virtuosic NYC-based cornetist, has a new album CherryCo consisting of tunes by Cherry and Ornette Coleman - seven by Cherry and five by Coleman, and is in the company of two experienced master craftsmen of rhythm, bassist Jay Anderson and drummer Adam Nussbaum, working with both of them for the first time.

With a strong musical sensibility, both melodic and rhythmic, the trio plunges deep into the progressive universe of these composers, taking the opportunity to innovate as well while re-shaping the tunes with a tweak of their own. With a full-bodied acoustic sound and an infallible understanding of one another’s movements, the band begins this journey to the past with the reggae-ish "Roland Alphonso" by Cherry, who composed it for the Jamaican tenorist referred to in the title. After blowing the theme’s deep-seated melody with crisp delicacy, Knuffke embarks on a trippy improvisation that will keep you engaged and enthralled, at the same time that stimulates his peers to push forward. After Anderson’s loping bass solo and the reinstatement of the theme, the final vamp briefly allows Nussbaum to intensify his unostentatious brushed attacks. 

Coleman’s shape-shifting "The Sphinx" is obstinate and animated in equal measure. The drummer's  percussive intro has the feel of a march throughout, preparing the ground for the brisk melody that erupts from Knuffke’s cornet. Well accompanied by Anderson’s playful game, he engages in a funk rock backbeat when the time to improvise arrives, but just until they decide to make another adjustment toward a hasty swinging flow. When Knuffke regains the spotlight again, Nussbaum throws in lots of cymbal and snare drum whisks. 

In the same vivid spirit, Cherry’s "Paris Ambulance Song" stands out through gracious coordination. By the end, we have Knuffke and Anderson trading fours with the drummer - which they also do on Coleman’s "Jayne", but this time expanding it into eight bars. This last tune, delivered with strong Latin accents, swings aplomb, propelled by a rhythm section that moves constantly in the pocket. 

Mood variations are constant throughout the recording. If "Art Deco" feels like a gentle jazz standard and grooves along with sweet-sounding solos, "Remembrance", a blues-based piece packed with Latin touches, funk, and swing, gains a stimulating African pulse whenever Nussbaum operates with mallets. In contrast, "Golden Heart" displays bouncing unisons uttered by cornet and bass on top of a fluid rhythm, carrying an inherent Arabic feel attached. 

The session ends with the title track, which is made of three different layers juxtaposed with as much elegance as freedom. The cornetist pours out multiple creative ideas taken from the freebop compendium and beyond, and the tune gradually decelerates toward the finale. 

Cherryco, a collection of classic jazz tunes given a passionate and tasteful contemporary treatment, is a treat for the ears.

        Grade A-

Favorite Tracks: 
01 – Roland Alphonso ► 04 – Rememberance ► 07 – Jayne

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Michael Bisio & Kirk Knuffke - Row For William O.

Michael Bisio: acoustic bass; Kirk Knuffke: trumpet.

Bassist Michael Bisio and trumpeter Kirk Knuffke, two relevant contributors in the improvised jazz panorama, got together at Park West Studios in Brooklyn to shape the six tunes that would be included in Row For William O.
Bisio dedicates this album to William O. Smith (better known as Bill Smith), a clarinetist, composer, and educator who occasionally recorded with Dave Brubeck and had a hand in Shelly Manne’s Concerto for Clarinet & Combo. 

The constructive duo opens with one of the honoree’s compositions entitled “Drago”, which exposes the theme’s melody in a gorgeous unison and is designed with absorbing grooves and stimulating swinging sections.
The title track gets a classical chamber feeling during its four-minute introductory section, in which we can appreciate the distinctive bowing bass of Bisio and fill our ears with the intuitive language of Knuffke. Throughout the subsequent section, the tune seems to veer into a ballad but the idea never took practical effect. At this phase, Bisio enjoys a great solo moment while Knuffke, showing an enviable control of the trumpet, explores different sounds.

Exaggerating in the title’s length but not in the focal daintiness of its intonations, Bisio’s “I Want To Do To You What Spring Does to Cherry Trees” is a more intimate journey gradually expands.
Resorting to a tight complicity and wistful abstraction, “December”, composed by the duo, often moves within complex textures created by Bisio's asynchronous plucking of strings. 

“To Birds…”, the closing tune is the opposite, a question-and-answer ritual that stands at the crossroads of classical and chamber jazz.
But the most appealing track on this recording is Bisio’s “Oh See O.C.”, a wonderful model in the art of improvising. A persistent and unusual swinging bass groove finds existential purpose in the impulsive contortions of the trumpet phrases.

Bisio and Knuffke take advantage of their elevated technique to better complement each other. 
Although in need of some mood changes, Row For William O. provides us with contrasting pitches and timbres that assure a fun ride.

         Grade B+

Favorite Tracks:
01 – Drago ► 02 – Row For William O. ► 05 – Oh See O.C.

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