Since their first meeting, and their first duet album, Christophe Rocher and Christofer Bjurstrom have continued, together and separately, their musical and exploratory journey, enriching and deepening the duo’s music through a cross between influences and artistic and cultural experiences. A singular music, which is neither the fusion nor the juxtaposition of two musical universes, but an open and constructive dialogue, an encounter from which a music is born that belongs only to this encounter.

WHAT THE PRESS SAID

“”This album is magnificent of mastery and cleverly calculated risks” “Wi
thout any nostalgia (and even, it would not bear witness to too old times), listening to this recording immediately refers me to the excellent concert given at THE ITEMM, during the recent Europa Jazz of Le Mans, by Christofer Bjurstrom and Christophe Rock. (…) Between the piano, sometimes fiery, sometimes dreamy of Bjurstrom and the acrobatic clarinet of Rocher, the conversation, on stage as in the studio, does not seem to weaken. One exhausts the rhythm when the other continues the melody. (…) The silence of the keys calls for the poetry of a tortured breath. Each, together or separately, oscillates between the intimacy of a fragile composition and the sudden energy of unbridled improvisation….(…) And so this album is magnificent in mastery and cleverly calculated risks. Bjurstrom and Rock never lose control of their own discourse. They know it at their fingertips, to the point of having a lot of fun with it, and we know it with it, accordingly. (…). “
Improjazz, Joel Pagier, November/December 2006

“”The duo, Christophe Rocher and Christofer Bjurstrom, indulges without complex in the game of cat and mouse. “
“Chausse-traps, mazes, distorting mirrors and monsters suddenly popping up, the pianist spares nothing to his companion, neither the false appointments, nor the caught off guard. And Rocher enjoys it to the point that the concert listens to the smile on his face, a bit like the adult, at the circus, not doubting that the acrobat will fall back on his feet, feels complicit in his virtuosity. The performance of the two antipodists will probably evoke more the Oulipian wordplay than the lyrical epic, but it is sometimes just as pleasant to reread Pérec as Laut
réamont… “Improjazz, Joel Pagier, July/August 2006

“A very elaborate speech in its associat
ive openness. The piano combines with great taste and naturalness a popular simplicity (reiteration of chord cycles, constant rhythms), a limitation of the power of the instrument, and techniques from improvised and contemporary music. Often prepared or worked from the inside to obtain vigorous and delicate resonances, Christofer Bjurstrom’s piano also comes straight from the accompanying scores. (…) Christophe Rocher’s clarinets are constantly overflowing with the conclusions that would lead to the harmonic-rhythmic structures of Bjurstrom, not in the classical way (melodic revivals, change of tones…) but on the proper register of improvisation, refusing from the outset any closure as a form of suicide. (…) the pieces form a kind of lieder cycle in the continuity of the CD. Incomplete without the others, each revives the interest listening. 
“Improjazz, Noel Tachet”

“This complementarity, listening, the duality of 2 artists who cherish improvisation, fly in this disc alternating caresses and strokes of claw, mixing jazz, neo-classical and traditional influences. An exciting journey to the heart of the sound ” Le Telegramme, February 2006″

“Duo Bjurstrom/Rocher: the revelation of the first
day!” Between Christofer Bjurstrom’s piano and Christophe Rocher’s clarinets, the music circulates, breathes, the discourse is fluid. An improvised music without blinkers with a strong taste for melodies and rhythms emerging from alloys of original timbres. A certainty: Christophe Rocher climbs to the top of the list of “French clarinetists who matter. 
“Thierry Giard, Jazz Culture, Europa Jazz festival 2006″

” … unexpected conversations, at once humorous, melancholy, passionate between the two instruments… the many influences and complicity are at the rendezvous, and we never tire of such rich dialogues between two instruments and two musicians of this talent…” (
Ouest-France, May 16, 2005)

Listen to excerpts