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About Sylvie Courvoisier

Radio & Podcasts

Mary Halvorson & Sylvie Courvoisier: Bone Bells And The Art Of Surprise

by Lawrence Peryer
April 5, 2025

Today, the Spotlight shines On two artists who've taken the piano-guitar duo to bold new places. Sylvie Courvoisier and Mary Halvorson . These two players come from different worlds: Sylvie from European classical traditions and Mary from experimental jazz guitar circles. But when they join forces, something magical happens. Their music shifts from delicate to eruptive, structured to spontaneous, with a shared musical language they've built over nearly a decade. The record Bone Bells (Pyroclastic, 2025) ...

Album Review

Sylvie Courvoisier and Mary Halvorson: Bone Bells

Read "Bone Bells" reviewed by Jack Kenny

by Jack Kenny
March 16, 2025

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 ...

Album Review

Sylvie Courvoisier and Mary Halvorson: Bone Bells

Read "Bone Bells" reviewed by Troy Dostert

by Troy Dostert
March 15, 2025

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 ...

Album Review

Sylvie Courvoisier and Mary Halvorson: Bone Bells

Read "Bone Bells" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
March 14, 2025

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 ...

Radio & Podcasts

Sylvie Courvoisier & Mary Halvorson, Silke Eberhard & Yannick Peeters

by Maurice Hogue
March 10, 2025

Time to celebrate the women of today's creative jazz and at the same time recognize International Women's Day. New releases include Bone Bells from the magical duo of pianist Sylvie Courvoisier & guitarist Mary Halvorson, Being A Ning from German saxophonist Silke Eberhard's killin' trio, and Italian bassist Silvia Bolognesi's Jungle Duke which explores the music of Duke Ellington. Other new albums sampled come from Belgian bassist Yannick Peeters, drummer Sun-Mi Hong and Nature Channel by the Corey Wright Green ...

Album Review

Sylvie Courvoisier: Chimaera

by John Sharpe
April 3, 2024

Even though pianist Sylvie Courvoisier has bassist Drew Gress and drummer Kenny Wollesen on hand for Chimaera, the six-piece band is a long way from being merely the storied threesome, which made Double Windsor (Tzadik, 2014), D'Agala (Intakt, 2018) and Free Hoops (Intakt, 2020), plus added guests. As she explains in the liners, the music was originally commissioned for the 2021 Sons d'Hiver festival in Paris and was inspired by the surreal works of French Symbolist artist ...

Album Review

Sylvie Courvoisier: Chimaera

Read "Chimaera" reviewed by Troy Dostert

by Troy Dostert
December 5, 2023

It says something about pianist Sylvie Courvoisier's current profile in creative jazz that she could assemble such a distinguished ensemble for her latest release, Chimaera. Augmenting her usual trio of bassist Drew Gress and drummer Kenny Wollesen are trumpeters Wadada Leo Smith and Nate Wooley, and with the always interesting Christian Fennesz completing the group on guitar and electronics, one would expect extraordinary results. And so they are--worthy of a lengthy, two-CD treatment, in fact. Courvoisier's work with ...