Mars

Pianist Matt Mitchell’s 2017 solo piano release *Førage* presented Tim Berne’s dense and forbidding compositions in a radically stripped-down setting, revealing their inner workings as never before. This sparked the imagination of Gregg Belisle-Chi, whose 2021 solo acoustic-guitar album *Koi: Performing the Music of Tim Berne* was a sequel to *Førage* of sorts, a like-minded endeavor with a whole different sonority. Now with three Berne-Mitchell sax-and-piano duo albums in existence (*Angel Dusk*, *Spiders*, *One More, Please*), Belisle-Chi continues the trend with *Mars*, preserving the silken acoustic-guitar texture of *Koi* but adding the sinuous, hard-edged element of Berne’s horn. What stands out is the music’s calm pacing and restraint, held together by Belisle-Chi’s effortless juggling of roles as he doubles and also harmonizes Berne’s leaping and unpredictable melodies. Dissonant intervals, ringing open strings, timbres specific to his instrument: all these things enable Belisle-Chi to tease out an emotion in the music that might not otherwise come through. (*ZONE ONE*, a second duo outing, came out later the same year on Berne’s Screwgun label.)