SYLVIE COURVOISIER piano
MARY HALVORSON guitar

Searching for the Disappeared Hour marks the second collaboration for these two singular musicians. Their initial collaboration, 2017’s Crop Circles, was recorded after a single concert (at New York’s now-defunct Cornelia Street Café) and found them repurposing existing compositions for the duo context. By contrast, the music on Searching for the Disappeared Hour was composed expressly for the duo, taking stunning advantage of the chemistry and familiarity forged during tours of Europe and the States in the intervening years.

“I think this album is much more developed,” Courvoisier says. “When I wrote pieces for Mary, I really thought about all the possibilities of the guitar. And her music has pretty tonalities, great melodies and a very clear sense of harmony and melody, so I love to darken it.”

“We both have an affinity towards darkening things,” adds Halvorson, “which is great because you can start with a joyous melody and there's all kinds of room to mess with it. We're both really open to that. And Sylvie is great at adding harmonies and filling stuff in, so I was happy to leave space for her to do her thing, not only in the improvised sections but also within the written parts.”

PRESS ABOUT SEARCHING FOR THE DISAPPEARED HOUR

“Sylvie Courvoisier and Mary Halvorson are contemporary improvisers who approach abstraction from two different angles: Courvoisier as a pianist at the bridge between free jazz and European classical music, and Halvorson as a deconstructive guitar improviser, strongly affiliated with (for lack of a better term) the Brooklyn jazz scene. Their second duo album, ‘Searching for the Disappeared Hour,’ was a chance to mine the jazz canon for inspiration while finding ways to playfully disrupt each other’s style.”

Giovanni Russonello, New York Times

2021 BEST RECORDINGS
Jerome Wilson, All About Jazz

2021 TOP JAZZ ALBUMS “The simpatico is now utter and a wonder. Both are players in the New Jazz world who value strong writing and how it connects to improvisation that is not defined or bounded by sets of chord changes.”

Will Layman, PopMatters

2021 TOP 12
Nate Chinen, NPR

2021 TOP 10 JAZZ AND IMPROV. RECORDINGS
Bill Meyer, The Wire/Magnet

★★★★ Courvoisier and Halvorson have a chemistry that brings out something new in both of them. The sounds they make here are both familiar and alien at the same time. This is a totally involving and, in its own warped way, beautiful session of music.

Jerome Wilson, All About Jazz

★★★★ ½ The synchronicity between these two move what is unapologetic experimental music into the realm of sheer musical beauty. They take turns heading to the musical edge, while the other holds the foundation. The result is always thoughtful, surprisingly accessible and perhaps unexpectedly melodic.

Keith Black Winnipeg Free Press

“This is a duo whose members, while like-minded musically, are different enough to surprise and entertain both the listener and each other.”

Robert Iannapollo, New York City Jazz Record

“On piano, nobody quite sounds like Sylvie Courvoisier, nor, on guitar, like Mary Halvorson. Their individual voices are distinctive, which is why there’s all kinds of intrigue when they come together in a recording studio.”

Dave Sumner, Bandcamp

“Courvoisier and Halvorson mine the jazz canon for inspiration while finding ways to playfully disrupt each other’s style.”

Giovanni Russonello, The New York Times

PRESS ABOUT “CROP CIRCLES”

“The duo released the album Crop Circles in 2017 via Relative Pitch Records. Dusted and All About Jazz gave the disc glowing reviews, as did several European publications. And DownBeat set up its four-star review of the album by describing Courvoisier and Halvorson as “two of New York’s most distinctive improvisers,” going on to praise the music’s “deft, interactive intimacy” and the duo’s way of “coming together and then drifting apart with unspoken grace… always serving the cumulative sound but remaining very much themselves.” "The affinity heard between the two is something that can't be taught... This meeting of two of the brightest minds on the edgier side of jazz today produces music that’s astonishing both in its fluency and ceaseless ingenuity."

—S. Victor Aaron, Something Else