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Jazz Articles about Sylvie Courvoisier
Sylvie 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 ReadingSylvie Courvoisier & Mary Halvorson, Silke Eberhard & Yannick Peeters
by Maurice Hogue
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 ...
Continue ReadingSylvie Courvoisier: Chimaera
by John Sharpe
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 ...
Continue ReadingSylvie Courvoisier: Chimaera
by Troy Dostert
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 ...
Continue ReadingSylvie Courvoisier / Cory Smythe: The Rite of Spring: Spectre d’un songe
by Karl Ackermann
Two daring jazz improvisers take on a cherished hundred-year-old classical ballet masterpiece with radical roots on The Rite of Spring: Spectre d'un songe. Igor Stravinsky was fresh off the success of his 1911 “Petrushka," which radiated with the artistic atmosphere of his Russia, when in 1913 he premiered “The Rite of Spring" at the opening of the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. The audience was divided into the Parisian elite in the boxes and the “bohemian" aesthetes scattered about the theater. Stravinsky's ...
Continue ReadingSolos & Duets: Dave Rimpus, Sylvie Courvoisier & Mary Halvorson, Mingus and more
by David Brown
In a duo performance, musicians become instrumental equals. The interchange of ideas and flow of music is like a conversation. And for the artist who performs solo, there is no place to hide. Today, we present a smorgasbord of solo and duo performances from Coleman Hawkins to Colin Stetson, Sylvie Courvoisier & Mary Halvorson to Duke Ellington and Jimmy Blanton, Art Tatum to Satoko Fujii, Peter Brotzmann and Walter Perkins to Bill Evans and Edie Gomez and so many more. ...
Continue ReadingSylvie Courvoisier / Mary Halvorson: Searching for the Disappeared Hour
by Jerome Wilson
Here pianist Sylvie Courvoisier and guitarist Mary Halvorson come together for the second time on record in a set of amorphous, ever-changing music that combines their two distinctive approaches into something unique. The musicians' individual sounds are very complimentary as Halvorson's strums and swoops interlock tightly with Courvoisier's precise notes. Together they show a friskiness not often heard in their individual work. Their playing has a dreamy, disoriented surface that sounds like other-dimensional cocktail music and often embeds ...
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