Kirk Knuffke & Jesse Stacken: Five

Cornetist Kirk Knuffke and pianist Jesse Stacken have a habit of tackling composers one at a time. The long-standing duo's early performances featured the music of Thelonious Monk exclusively, before they broadened their palette to include Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus. For their fourth release as a duo they have taken the unusual but, it turns out, inspired decision to juxtapose two apparently unrelated composers, Bill Evans and Carla Bley. Out of such random collisions do fresh sounds come: Knuffke and Stacken are probably more associated with the freer end of the fast-evolving Brooklyn scene, but the strong melodies, the sharp contrasts, and the almost indecently intimate horn-meets-chords setting makes for a musical conversation that hovers between form and abstraction, accessible but adventurous, profound but likeable. kirkknuffke.com