Morning Bells Whistle Bright is the product of a new union between the great veteran American bassist Michael and the prodigious, up-and-coming Korean pianist Eunhye Jeong. This 2025 ESP-Disk release pairs two highly accomplished musicians who are improvisation masters jointly making up music on the spot. That’s a recipe for breathtaking, constantly surprising music and it’s just what Morning Bells Whistle Bright delivers.
Though they hardly performed together until getting together to make this record, Jeong and Bisio are so attuned to each other. “Point Expands To World” is give-and-take in such equal portions it’s impossible to sus who is leading and who is following but collectively, they’re going somewhere. but put that aside for a minute and it’s easy to marvel it the sheer chops and unfailing instincts by either.
Bisio does lead the way with sawing bass for “And Then She Was There,” and with Jeong, induce a composition with classical overtones and a somber, heavy presence.
Bisio isn’t done varying the mode by which is attacks his bass: for “Dusts Into Substantiality,” he turns it into a percussive instrument and Jeong responds with some percussiveness of her own while introducing the beginnings of a tonal pattern. Pretty soon, Bisio picks up those cues and runs with it, augmenting with harmonic complements.
Jeong’s cunning exploitation of the space between the notes makes itself known during the opening minutes of “Points Multiply Constant Beauty,” providing a choppy, sharp-angled counter to Bisio’s closely packed notes. But when Bisio goes arco and elongates his notes, Jeong responds in kind. The performance moves into a third phase where each deliver dispersed notes that gets increasingly closer together.
Avant-grade jazz tenor sax titan Joe McPhee joins in the fun for several tracks, as does his longtime cohort on drums, Jay Rosen. The two multiply the number of possible alluring interactions and the Jeong / Bisio Duo take full advantage of it.
McPhee and Rosen make it quartet beginning with “Drinking Galactic Water,” and Bisio’s keen ear identifies and submits the harmonic structure around McPhee’s expressions as Jeong works a middle ground between comping and co-leading.
McPhee kicked off ” Drinking,” while Rosen kicks off “Morning Bells Whistle Bright” using a novel array of percussion devices. It’s Bisio who is the first to respond to it, using short, nervous scrapes of his strings that introduce the kernel of an impromptu harmonic pattern that Jeong and McPhee dance around. Bisio maintains a leading role, introducing an hypnotic bass figure midway through and McPhee pounces on this new direction, a groove that takes this lengthy piece the rest of the way home.
“Disclosure” is a Jeong / McPhee duet, with both deftly leveraging space. “Jaybird” pairs the pianist with the drums of Rosen, and the two playfully spar like a cat-and-mouse game. “Superpreternatural” is a Bisio and Rosen rumble, the former sawing to the rolling rhythm meted out by the latter.
The Eunhye Jeong and Michael Bisio Duo might be just starting out but the sheer wealth of talent, experience and acute intuition they bring makes their first set of recordings together click like they’ve been doing this for decades.
Morning Bells Whistle Bright is currently available and can be had from Bandcamp.
*** Eunhye Jeong CD’s and vinyl on Amazon ***
*** Michael Bisio CD’s and vinyl on Amazon ***
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