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Sylvie Courvoisier and Mary Halvorson: Bone Bells
by Jack Kenny
Sylvie Courvoisier and Mary Halvorson! The combination of two such unconventional musicians is both rewarding, challenging and unnerving. The two women are radical disruptors. Their visions and their ambitions are vast. Their range of influences is dizzying. Their creativity seems limitless; their refusal to be conventional is absolute. Even the mechanics of their instruments are subject to their inventiveness. The extent of their comprehensive insurrection is not really acknowledged. Does their gender obscure it? In many ways, their ...
Continue ReadingSylvie Courvoisier and Mary Halvorson: Bone Bells
by Troy Dostert
Given that Sylvie Courvoisier and Mary Halvorson are two of the most distinctive instrumentalists in the world of jazz and improvised music, it is a particular treat to hear them together in a duo configuration, where the intimacy of the setting allows for a fuller appreciation of their virtuosity and empathetic sensibilities than is sometimes possible on their more ambitious group projects. Courvoisier's pianistic prowess can be astonishing, but on recordings like 2023's Chimaera (Intakt Records) it was her arranging ...
Continue ReadingSylvie Courvoisier and Mary Halvorson: Bone Bells
by Dan McClenaghan
Pianist Sylvie Courvoisier and guitarist Mary Halvorson are the boldest of musical artists. Bold and uncompromising, each with distinctive voices coming from different places. For Courvoisier, it is the classical music world and European chamber music that she mixes with the sounds of avant-garde jazz. Halvorson started out early with the violin, until the sound of the guitar of Jimi Hendrix pulled her into the freer and more hard rock realm. This move picked up momentum when she sat in ...
Continue ReadingTomeka Reid Quartet: 3+3
by Chris May
Jazz cello has come a long way since Fred Katz's pioneering work with Chico Hamilton in the 1950s. Back then, the instrument was looked on as a novelty turn. In 2024, while still relatively avant-garde, its presence in a lineup is less exceptional. A pivotal point was American cellist Adbul Wadud's By Myself (Bishara, 1977), an album Tomeka Reid has acknowledged as an inspiration, and which may have played a part in her transition from classical music to jazz around ...
Continue ReadingMyra Melford's Fire And Water Quintet: Hear The Light Singing
by John Sharpe
Pianist Myra Melford's blue chip Fire And Water quintet assuredly sidesteps second album syndrome. Hear The Light Singing stands very much the equal of the band's superlative eponymous debut. The only change is that Lesley Mok takes Susie Ibarra's place behind the trapset, otherwise the triumvirate completing the starry squad remains Ingrid Laubrock on saxophones, Tomeka Reid on cello and Mary Halvorson on guitar. In the liners Melford explains that the five pieces titled “Insertions" here were ...
Continue ReadingMary Halvorson: Cloudward
by Doug Collette
The title of guitarist/composer Mary Halvorson's Cloudward alludes to the sense of optimism she has stated she felt when writing the bulk of the material in fall of 2022. And while this palpable sense of faith in the future is in marked contrast to the tangible air of eerie foreboding that surfaced so often on this LP's predecessors, the presence of largely the same personnel lineup--the Amaryllis Sextet-- provides a stable link of continuity. The reappearance of prior collaborators recording ...
Continue ReadingMary Halvorson: Cloudward
by Mike Jurkovic
Guitarist, composer & raconteur Mary Halvorson could very comfortably (and rightfully) wear the sobriquet of “The Charles Mingus of Guitar" if she wanted to. But even that open-ended comparison would limit her as she outdoes herself again on Cloudward. Though it must surely be getting harder to top herself given the string of releases--the deliberately articulate schizophrenia Amaryllis and Belladonna (Nonesuch, 2022), the unbridled trio synergy Multicolored Midnight (Cunneiform, 2018), the crackling mad invention propelling 2018's Code Girl (Firehouse 12 ...
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