Jazz Articles about Mary Halvorson

About Mary Halvorson

Album Review

Trevor Dunn's Trio-Convulsant avec Folie À Quatre: Séances

by Mark Corroto
September 27, 2022

If you thought the Hang Mike Pence and Three Percenters crowd are just a phenomenon of the 21st century, let me introduce you to the Convulsionnaires of Saint-Médard, an 18th century Christian sect with the hysterical practices of coprophagia (yes, eating feces), spontaneous milk-vomiting and levitation. After the established religious authorities cracked down on the Convulsionnaires, many were sent to mental asylums, but others continued with less public séances or 'sessions.' Composer and bassist Trevor Dunn unearths this ...

Album Review

Columbia Icefield: Ancient Songs of Burlap Heroes

Read "Ancient Songs of Burlap Heroes" reviewed by Jerome Wilson

by Jerome Wilson
September 11, 2022

Trumpeter Nate Wooley can create impressive large-scale compositions. His Seven Storey Mountain VI, (Pyroclastic, 2021) is a massive work, dealing with the rights of women, that used fourteen musicians and singers. His group, Columbia Icefield, achieves similar results with just four members, Wooley himself on trumpet and amplifier, Mary Halvorson on electric guitar, Susan Alcorn on pedal steel guitar and Ryan Sawyer on drums plus Mat Maneri and Trevor Dunn guesting on some tracks. This music moves at a glacial ...

Album Review

Columbia Icefield: Ancient Songs of Burlap Heroes

Read "Ancient Songs of Burlap Heroes" reviewed by Troy Dostert

by Troy Dostert
August 19, 2022

Nate Wooley refuses to make trivial music. Whether the endlessly creative trumpeter and composer is rethinking the relationship between artistic production and community, as on Mutual Aid Music (Pleasure of the Text, 2021), or pursuing ways to re-envision music's spiritual potential, seen most recently on 2020's Seven Storey Mountain VI (Pyroclastic Records), he always provides his listeners with a lot to ponder. This is no less evident with his Columbia Icefield project, which dives headlong into humankind's fraught relationship with ...

Radio & Podcasts

Mary Halvorson, Josh Sinton, Pat Thomas & The Big Room

by Maurice Hogue
July 20, 2022

Guitarist Mary Halvorson's new double album marks her debut for Nonesuch. You'll hear a sample from em>Amaryllis and Belladonna. You'll also get a taste of Slovenian guitarist Samo Salamon's terrific new recording Pure And Simple with the great Arild Andersen and Rakalam Bob Moses. Other new trio sets come from baritone saxophonist Josh Sinton and the international threesome of English pianist Pat Thomas and Swedes saxophonist Sture Ericson and drummer Raymond Strid, France's The Big Room & Germany's Blechbarrage. Quartets ...

Album Review

Myra Melford: For The Love Of Fire And Water

Read "For The Love Of Fire And Water" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
July 4, 2022

Inspired by artist Cy Twombly, pianist Myra Melford has produced a superb album which combines notated signposts with unbridled exchanges. She's helped by an all star agglomeration comprising some of New York's most accomplished instrumentalists: guitarist Mary Halvorson, saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock, cellist Tomeka Reid and drummer Susie Ibarra. As might be expected of the city's brightest talents, their paths have crossed on multiple occasions, but never in this particular permutation until they appeared as part of a Melford residency at ...

Live Review

Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville 2022

by Mike Chamberlain
May 31, 2022

Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville Various Venues Victoriaville, Quebec, Canada May 19-22, 2022 The weekend of May 19-22, was the first time since 2019 that artistic director Michel Levasseur and the team at the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville (FIMAV, or Victo, as it is popularly known) were able to mount a full program of concerts and other presentations (sound installations, films) without tight pandemic restrictions. This meant that, ...

Multiple Reviews

Mary Halvorson: Alchemist Supreme

by Doug Collette
May 13, 2022

Produced and mixed by John Dieterich, with complementary cover art of paintings by DM Stith, the two companion pieces constituting the Nonesuch Records debut by Brooklyn-based guitarist, composer and MacArthur fellow Mary Halvorson restore truth to the often-cliched phrase 'the complete package.' Amaryllis features master improvisers in the company of a string quartet rendering arrangements devised to continually freshen explorations of the material. Meanwhile, Belladonna is a set of challenging compositions written specifically for the guitar in conjunction with that ...