Mary Halvorson's Amaryllis Sextet At Domicil

Mary Halvorson's Amaryllis Sextet
Domicil
Dortmund, Germany
November 6, 2025

Sixty seconds before this concert's advertised start time, a member of the venue's tech team deposited a gym towel on each on-stage music stand. It was an ominous gesture for a chilly evening in autumnal north-west Germany. Mary Halvorson's Amaryllis Sextet clearly planned to push for the burn.

The group has released three albums and features vibraphonist Patricia Brennan, trombonist Jacob Garchik, bassist Nick Dunston and drummer Tomas Fujiwara. Adam O'Farrill added trumpet on the trio of records, but tonight Jonathan Finlayson rotated into that roster spot. On a Thursday evening during the Jazztage Dortmund festival, the group had attracted a near-full house to this spacious-yet-cosy former movie theater.

Domicil's expansive intimacy neatly reflected Halvorson's writing and improvising, which successfully merges coherence and familiarity with a limitless capacity to surprise. Much of the show's material came from About Ghosts (Nonesuch Records, 2025). That included the opening number, "Amaranthine." It is a happily hopping piece where instruments pass around a simple four-note shape until a brisk rhythm arrives. Halvorson's guitar sound and patterns added a James Bond-ish lilt.

The guitarist switched up her instrument's voice throughout the night rather than sticking to a signature setup. She provided one passage of crunchy distortion, for example, with loop pedals and slide playing in the mix throughout the show. Halvorson implemented these variations from a center-stage seat. Her upstanding bandmates were installed in a horseshoe formation around their leader. Together, they delivered compositions that maximized the contribution from each player while also achieving far more than the sum of their parts.

That singular cohesion only faltered in the encore, "Incarnadine." This tune, taken from the group's 2024 album Cloudward (Nonesuch Records), put wider separation between sonic streams. It had a euphoric and climactic feeling, with each instrument investigating its own distinct terrain. Dunston applied a beater to his bass. Fujiwara pattered his hands across the drumskins. Brennan leaned close to the vibraphone and moved her mouth to generate a wah-wah effect.

By isolating the sextet's individual muscles, the evening's final song rounded off a full-bodied session that unleashed a flood of dopamine and endorphins among the 300-strong crowd of concertgoers. Halvorson's music is sometimes challenging but often invigorating and nourishing too. As Amaryllis headed to the locker room, their audience stepped back outside into the crisp November night carrying a warming, post-workout glow.

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