SYLVIE COURVOISIER TRIO

SYLVIE COURVOISIER, piano
KENNY WOLLESEN, drums & Wollesonics
DREW GRESS, bass

With every concert and every album this glorious trio's modus operandi becomes more clear – Sylvie Courvoisier, Drew Gress and Kenny Wollesen play morphing music by turns intricately detailed and ambiguously wide open. The music Courvoisier writes is rigorously organized and calls for ensemble precision, as a few thorny unisono heads demonstrate. But the music also harbors a misterioso, dreamlike quality that may surface at any time, induced by a wistful ostinato or moonlit piano arpeggio stubbornly repeated, or by a quiet episode that underscores the depth of the trio's sonic space.

They also do that good stuff we prize jazz for – the happy swing-ing, the coming together when they make complex material sing, and the flying apart when the players explore it on their own.

"Some pianists approach the instrument like it's a cathedral - Sylvie Courvoisier treats it like a playground." So observed Kevin Whitehead in the notes to the Sylvie Courvoisier Trio's D'Agala (Intakt), an album selected as one of the year's best by both The New York Times and Los Angeles Times in 2018. Previously, Double Windsor (Tzadik) the first album recorded by Courvoisier in league with bassist Drew Gress and drummer Kenny Wollesen - had been named best album of 2014 by Slate and New York City Jazz Record, along with receiving the "CHOC" from Jazz Magazine and Jazzman in France. In his notes to Free Hoops - this virtuosic trio's latest album, due in September 2020 from Intakt - Whitehead goes into detail about the range of atmosphere explored by Courvoisier and company: "The music harbors a misterioso, dreamlike quality... induced by a wistful ostinato or moonlit piano arpeggio, or by a quiet episode that underscores the depth of the trio's sonic space, as when a slapped-strings piano bass cluster explodes into the void. They also do that good stuff we prize jazz for: the happy swinging, the coming together when they make complex material sing." Courvoisier has earned just renown for balancing two distinct worlds: the richly detailed depth of her European chamber-music roots and the grooving, hook-laden sounds of the downtown jazz scene in New York City, her home now for two decades. Beyond her trio with Gress and Wollesen, the Swiss pianist's partnership with violinist Mark Feldman - lauded on both sides of the Atlantic - has yielded a long-running duo, as well as a top quartet. Over the years, Courvoisier has also worked with such avant-jazz luminaries as John Zorn, Wadada Leo Smith, Yusef Lateef, Evan Parker, Ikue Mori, Ellery Eskelin, Susie Ibarra, Fred Frith and Mary Halvorson.

-Bradley Bambarger

One of the most creative pianists in the downtown scene, and a long time collaborator of Mark Feldman, Ikue Mori and many others, Sylvie combines a brilliant technique with a wild imagination that straddles classical, jazz, improvisation and more. Featuring the dynamic rhythm section of Kenny Wollesen and Drew Gress, the music combines the best of improvisation and composition in the classic piano trio format. Three years in the making this is an essential project that highlights an exciting new musical world.

- John Zorn

...Even among the headliners, the trio of pianist Sylvie Courvoisier, bassist Drew Gress and drummer Kenny Wollesen stood out. A unit for some ten years, the band exhibits an uncanny chemistry. They remain simultaneously tight yet loose, navigating melodic fragments in unlikely places, delivering explosive flurries and making abrupt detours. Although it’s a repertoire they have toured for several years, they continue to uncover new facets, finding thrilling opportunities for group interplay and unexpected pockets for individual expression. Gress frequently demonstrated why he is in such demand, as he combined a finely honed lyric sense with impeccable timing, while Wollesen embellished and implied the beat as much as playing it. Courvoisier shifted seamlessly between keys and interior preparations, as volatile as her compositions, ever ready to unleash forearms and backs of hands when the moment required it, in a set that was variously combustible, solemn and vivacious, sometimes within the space of a single number.

BY John Sharpe - ULRICHSBERG KALEIDOPHON

FILM: Mimi Chakarova

ALBUMS

FREE HOOPS -Intakt CD 351 - follows the widely celebrated trio album D'AGALA - Intakt CD 300 - counted as among the best albums of the year by The New York Times.