Sylvie Courvoisier and Mary Halvorson's "Bone Bells"

My greatest missed concert regret of last year was not getting to see the estimable guitarist Mary Halvorson with Myra Melford's Fire & Water Quintet, who played Houston and Austin but nowhere in North Texas, I was told, for want of a suitable venue with a grand piano. Sigh. As much as I dig Halvorson's own records, some of her freshest playing comes in settings where she's a side musician or collaborator -- not the least of which are the albums she's made in tandem with the Swiss composer-pianist Sylvie Courvoisier. On Bone Bells, out March 14 on Pyroclastic, the two musicians alternate compositions, going shot for shot with tunes that highlight each other's strengths. 

Halvorson's title track opens the album with an off-kilter moodiness that recalls (to these feedback-scorched ears) the piano intro from Lou Reed's Berlin. The guitarist's trademark wobbly pitch-shifting interrupts her otherwise crystalline melodic lines, while Courvoisier plays with the time on her chordal exposition of the theme. Halvorson's "Folded Secret" has a pointillistic theme, essayed by Courvoisier on prepared piano before she takes off in solo flight, scattering cascades of notes, followed by the composer's own tortuously twisting extemporization. The guitarist's "Beclouded" evokes an airy atmosphere over a slightly ominous ostinato, while her "Float Queens" features rolling unison lines that give way to ever more freewheeling improv episodes. 

Courvoisier's "Esmeralda," inspired by a sculpture by Dutch artist Cornelis Zitman, juxtaposes turbulence with spacious intervals that give Halvorson room to employ electronics and extended techniques. The pianist's "Nag's Head Valse," named for a British pub the duo frequented on tour, contains some finely wrought, freely improvised dialogue in between the slightly askew dance sections. With a title that refers to both a Monty Python sketch and a work by Swiss sculptor Sophie Bouvier Auslander, Courvoisier's "Silly Walks" is the most abstract composition here, while her "Cristellina e Lontano" ends the album on a somber and somewhat disquieting note. A meeting of musical minds that's well worth revisiting.