Sylvie Courvoisier & Mary Halvorson - "Bone Bells"

Sylvie Courvoisier (piano) and Mary Halvorson (guitar) will perform brand new compositions, as well as music from their most recent releases: the new album “BONE BELLS” is coming out in March 2025 on Pyroclastic Records. The duo presents intricate compositions, telepathic interplay, riotous and ferocious fun: acoustic piano and electric guitar duets have rarely provoked such pleasure.

Pianist-composer Sylvie Courvoisier, a native of Switzerland, has earned just renown for balancing two distinct worlds: the deep, richly detailed chamber music of her European roots and the grooving, hook-laden sounds of the downtown jazz scene in New York City, her home for more than two decades. Few artists feel truly at ease in both concert halls and jazz clubs, playing improvised or composed music. But Courvoisier – “a pianist of equal parts audacity and poise,” according to The New York Times – is as compelling when performing Stravinsky’s iconic Rite of Spring in league with Flamenco dancer-choreographer Israel Galván and pianist Cory Smythe as she is when improvising with her own widely acclaimed jazz trio, featuring bassist Drew Gress and drummer Kenny Wollesen. In music as in life, Courvoisier crosses borders with a creative spirit and a free mind; her music-making is as playful as it is intense, as steeped in tradition as it is questing and intrepid.

Guitarist and composer Mary Halvorson has been called “NYC’s least-predictable improviser” (Howard Mandel, City Arts), “the most forward-thinking guitarist working right now” (Lars Gotrich, NPR.org) and “one of today’s most formidable bandleaders” (Francis Davis, Village Voice). Halvorson’s most recent releases, Amaryllis and Belladonna, showcase her string quartet writing deftly interpreted by The Mivos Quartet, alongside a new sextet featuring Adam O’Farrill (trumpet), Jacob Garchik (trombone), Patricia Brennan (vibraphone), Nick Dunston (bass) and Tomas Fujiwara (drums). The twin debuts for Nonesuch Records, released in May 2022, were called “...new landmarks in Halvorson’s already inimitable discography” in a five star review by The Guardian.