Sylvie Courvoisier, Wadada Leo Smith and Mary Halvorson at Roulette

Sylvie Courvoisier, duets with Wadada Leo Smith and Mary Halvorson
Roulette Intermedium
New York, NY
December 7, 2025

So far this jazz season, you'd be hard-pressed to find a double bill as savvy, timely and well-located as Sunday's concert of duets at Roulette Intermedium in Brooklyn. In successive sets, pianist Sylvie Courvoisier played with her partners for two acclaimed duo albums in 2025: trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith, with whom she recorded Angel Falls (Intakt Records, 2025), and guitarist Mary Halvorson, with whom she recorded Bone Bells (Pyroclastic Records, 2025). .

The evening's two encounters were intriguingly different in structure, approach and feel. What they shared—apart from Courvoisier, of course—was a generally subdued tone and superlative musical chemistry. In nearly two hours of music, there was barely a moment of creative coasting or unwelcome repetition.

Up first, the set with Smith evinced a looser and more spontaneous air than the pairing with Halvorson. Courvoisier and the trumpeter seemed, outwardly at least, largely and freely improvisatory. They took turns taking the musical lead, with each sometimes pausing and listening in order to respond to the other, before entering the fray again.

Yet appearances can deceive; as the performance proceeded, deep musical planning became evident. Each piece, without ever adopting the standard structure of mainstream jazz, possessed a tight focus and an internal logic that drew listeners along through distinct beginnings and middles, followed by endings that approached organically and were really a surprise. The performance was a distinctive and engrossing master class in balancing structure and freedom.

Smith's sonority was its own pleasure, as ever. The hornman employs special techniques—the likes of sputters, smears, and overtones—with relative restraint. His signature sound is a gorgeous, pure tone, embellished by little more than slow and subtle vibrato. 

The Courvoisier-Halvorson set was different before a note was even played—in the presence of music stands bearing scores in front of both musicians, where the previous set had none. In a track-by-track run-through of their album (which is actually their third duo recording), the two women scrutinized the scores, sometimes to play knotty figures in near-unison. At times, the effect was of two artists playing as one, a meld that sometimes evoked musically the visual thrill of watching pairs of dancers or figure skaters in tight synchronicity. The performance felt more akin to a chamber music program than a typical jazz set. 

Halvorson's playing, on a warm-toned hollow-body Guild, favored fleet spiky lines and turned (sparingly) to effects pedals to shade her sound with echo and other effects.

Courvoisier adapted seamlessly to each partner. She played more conventionally with Halvorson. With Smith, she more often leaned into the Steinway to pluck and strum the strings, or to drop balls or metal bars atop them, to make areas of the keyboard sound percussive and mechanical. She also appeared at one point to attach to strings an electronic bow, a gizmo that sustains a continuous note.

Yet Courvoisier's sonic and musical experimentation was tempered by her deep roots in classical music. While she doesn't sound quite like any other pianist, from either jazz or classical, her yen for rolling patterns sometimes evokes Keith Jarrett in his solo performances.

The venue contributed much to the resonance of Sunday's show. Roulette is just a few years shy of presenting adventurous music for a half century in a succession of venues—with a historic Brooklyn theater as its home since 2011. When more standard jazz venues in Manhattan present—and kudos to them for this—the likes of Halvorson or Smith, the result for some attendees is exciting discovery, for others quizzical surprise.

By contrast, Roulette and its long-nurtured audience exude a consistent comfort with—and commitment to—music that pushes the artistic envelope. That's long made it among the best places anywhere in the world to see artists like Courvoisier, Smith and Halvorson.  (Sunday's set, like most at the venue, is now streaming free in its entirety on the Roulette Intermedium YouTube channel.)

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