Burkard Kunkel - Two Geese by the River (2023)

The lyrically alert duo album "Two Geese By the River" with Burkard Kunkel and Bob Degen

It's autumn, the foliage on the trees and bushes along the riverbank has been colored accordingly, and the two men in the photographs are warmly dressed. One carries a basset horn with him.

But is that now, in the opening piece “Soliloqui”, the basset horn or rather a bass clarinet? A few bars later the question is answered: the basset horn probably doesn't reach that deep. In other cases, everything is clear from the start: this powerful, overtone-saturated sound spectrum can only be the bass clarinet. And that finer, rough and hoarse melody line up there, that's the basset horn. Both belong to the melodious family of clarinets, so they are closely related, but sometimes they differ considerably. Later, in "Paris - St. Rochus", one hears the zither, which is rarely used in contemporary jazz.

Burkard Kunkel is the man with the zither and the clarinets, you can hear Bob Degen on the piano, and when you hear Bob Degen it's easy to ask yourself why he didn't become like Keith Jarrett. There are no musical reasons for this.

And what are the geese doing there? It's not these unpopular Egyptian geese, but two of the good old Nils Holgersson geese. Their plumage bright white, their necks stretched out, they look out over the water - watchful like the geese of Juno in ancient Rome and probably not silent.

However, this is not an idyll. Rather, there is something like an autumnal, serious, wise tension about everything. And of course also about the music of the duo.

The music has intense lyrical qualities, and its nuanced dialogic character manages without a hint of routine. There is no periodic rhythm, no common harmonies, no traditional language of forms.