Photo by C. Mardok
Sylvie Courvoisier -piano
Mary Halvorson -guitar
Sylvie Courvoisier (piano) and Mary Halvorson (guitar) will perform brand new compositions, as well as music from their most recent release, Searching For the Disappeared Hour (Pyroclastic Records, 2021). An eagerly awaited follow-up album to 2017’s Crop Circles, the duo presents intricate compositions, telepathic interplay, riotous and ferocious fun: acoustic piano and electric guitar duets have rarely provoked such pleasure.
Courvoisier and Halvorson mine the jazz canon for inspiration while finding ways to playfully disrupt each other’s style. Giovanni Russonello, New York Times
Top jazz albums of 2021: “The simpatico is now utter and a wonder. Both are players in the New Jazz world who value strong writing and how it connects to improvisation that is not defined or bounded by sets of chord changes.” - Will Layman, PopMatters
★★★★ Courvoisier and Halvorson have a chemistry that brings out something new in both of them. The sounds they make here are both familiar and alien at the same time. This is a totally involving and, in its own warped way, beautiful session of music. - Jerome Wilson, All About Jazz
Pianist-composer Sylvie Courvoisier, a native of Switzerland, has earned just renown for balancing two distinct worlds: the deep, richly detailed chamber music of her European roots and the grooving, hook-laden sounds of the downtown jazz scene in New York City, her home for more than two decades. Few artists feel truly at ease in both concert halls and jazz clubs, playing improvised or composed music. But Courvoisier – “a pianist of equal parts audacity and poise,” according to The New York Times – is as compelling when performing Stravinsky’s iconic Rite of Spring in league with Flamenco dancer-choreographer Israel Galván and pianist Cory Smythe as she is when improvising with her own widely acclaimed jazz trio, featuring bassist Drew Gress and drummer Kenny Wollesen. Then there are her ear-opening collaborations with such avant-jazz luminaries as John Zorn, Wadada Leo Smith, Evan Parker, Ikue Mori, Ned Rothenberg , Susie Ibarra, Fred Frith, Christian Fennesz, Mark Feldman, Ken Vandermark and Nate Wooley . In music as in life, Courvoisier crosses borders with a creative spirit and a free mind; her music-making is as playful as it is intense, as steeped in tradition as it is questing and intrepid. JazzTimes has said: “Courvoisier keeps you on the edge of your seat because it feels like the piano cannot contain her. Her careening solos seem to overwhelm and overflow the keyboard and keep spilling.”
Guitarist, composer and MacArthur Fellow Mary Halvorson has been called “NYC’s least-predictable improviser” (Howard Mandel, City Arts), “the most forward-thinking guitarist working right now” (Lars Gotrich, NPR.org) and “one of today’s most formidable bandleaders” (Francis Davis, Village Voice). Halvorson’s most recent releases, Amaryllisand Belladonna, showcase her string quartet writing deftly interpreted by The Mivos Quartet, alongside a new sextet featuring Adam O’Farrill (trumpet), Jacob Garchik (trombone), Patricia Brennan (vibraphone), Nick Dunston (bass) and Tomas Fujiwara (drums). The twin debuts for Nonesuch Records, released in May 2022, were called “...new landmarks in Halvorson’s already inimitable discography” in a five star review by The Guardian. Collaborative projects include the longstanding collective ensemble Thumbscrew (also with Formanek and Fujiwara), and a chamber-jazz duo with violist Jessica Pavone. Over the past two decades Ms. Halvorson has also performed in bands led by Anthony Braxton, Tim Berne, Taylor Ho Bynum, Trevor Dunn, Tomas Fujiwara, Ingrid Laubrock, Jason Moran, Joe Morris, Tom Rainey, Tomeka Reid, Marc Ribot, Ches Smith and John Zorn, among others.