By Steve Feeney

Serious but not somber would be a succinct way to describe this trio’s work as heard on disc and in a powerful recent live performance.

Sylvie Courvoisier Trio: Free Hoops (Intakt Records) and streamed live from Roulette on September 30.

Though a little slower than some to gain broad recognition, the New York–based, Switzerland-born pianist Sylvie Courvoisier (b. 1968) has attained a solid reputation among those who have come to recognize her music-making’s considerable strengths and subtleties.

She’s an incisive avant-gardist who, nonetheless, will on occasion sweeten up harmonies as well as share a smile with her musical partners. Courvoisier adds an important voice to a coterie of contemporary pianists (Kris Davis, Myra Melford, Satoko Fujii, and others) who pleasurably push the edges of the ever-expanding universe of what can be called jazz. She almost always brings structure into her free-flowing forays.

Free Hoops, the third disc from her veteran trio (featuring Drew Gress on bass and Kenny Wollesen on drums), continues Courvoisier’s bent for dedicating her compositions to individuals and, here, even to her pets.

Opening with a feline dedication, “Lulu Dance” gives us the trio taking up a sort of rough minimalism, with an insistence that summon images of a stalker’s fascination. The piece then goes quiet, wallowing in uneasy repose before launching into the pursuit of relentless energetic  turns that generate fervid interest. Pauses and interludes mark much of Courvoisier’s work and serve to effectively frame her more intense passages.

“Requiem d’un songe,” a tribute to the legendary, forward-thinking bandleader Claude Thornhill, sets up a mysterious space, created by varying rhythms from bass and drums, into which the leader sprinkles notes. A Gress solo hangs languidly above an increasingly agitated Courvoisier.

Gress receives a tribute with “Birdies of Paradise,” a work that suggests a story filled with fluttering arrivals and departures via hand drumming, arco slides, and dampened piano flourishes.

The title piece, dedicated to the pianist’s musician husband Mark Feldman, surrounds taps and varied pitch percussion with an anxious clatter from the keyboard. A vamp, which intimates the arrival of a lyrical respite, cuts itself short.

Serious but not somber would be a succinct way to describe this trio’s work as heard on disc and in a powerful recent live performance streamed from Brooklyn, NY, on September 30.

From the stage of the Roulette artists’ space, Courvoisier, Gress, and Wollesen mesmerized with a 75-minute set that featured mostly pieces from the new disc. Both the video and sound quality were excellent. The performances confirmed the sometimes delicate and intimate but always dramatic approach favored by this tight-knit threesome.

“Just Twisted,” a John Zorn dedication, was an intense exercise that featured some of Courvoisier’s most ferocious playing. Karate-like chops across the black keys with the left hand were matched with knuckle-rolls with the right, generating transformative moments that overflowed with expressive energy.

“Nicotine Sarcoline” and “Highway 1,” the last two pieces on Free Hoops, closed the concert. Each gave Wollesen space to showcase what he calls “Wollesonics,” a somewhat idiosyncratic collection of percussion techniques that expand the trio’s palette, considerably enhanced by Gress’s deep-textured arco work and the leader’s playful treatment of the piano’s innards as a source for refreshingly alternate sonorities.

Courvoisier and her trio specialize in serving up a fertile artistic mélange that is filled with free flights, substantial ideas, and subtle passions.

Steve Feeney is a Maine native and attended schools in Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts. He has a Master of Arts Degree in American and New England Studies from the University of Southern Maine. He began reviewing music on a freelance basis for the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram in 1995. He was later asked to also review theater and dance. Recently, he has added BroadwayWorld.com as an outlet and is pleased to now contribute to Arts Fuse.