BALLAKÉ SISSOKO, VINCENT SEGAL

The Malian kora master and the French cellist have cultivated a rare complicity for nearly twenty years, born of improvised conversations and sealed in 2009 with Chamber Music, an album recorded in Bamako and acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic — from NPR to the Guardian, and Le Monde in between. With Musique de nuit, their second opus, the duo chose to capture on the wing the very essence of their art: nocturnes recorded after midnight on the rooftop of Ballaké Sissoko’s home, in the heart of the Ntomikorobougou district, where the breath of the night slips into the weave of the music. Kora and cello intertwine, and the two virtuosi unite the traditions of Mali with the soul of Western music in a delicate, luminous conversation, touched with baroque, Brazilian and jazz echoes — from Passa Quatro to Samba Tomora, all the way to the blazing voice of the griotte Babani Koné on Diabaro. Two hundred concerts across the world later, their music has lost none of its quiet nobility: far from the noise of the world, it celebrates the murmur, the listening, and the sharing.