• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • About
  • Donate

The Arts Fuse

Boston's Online Arts Magazine: Dance, Film, Literature, Music, Theater, and more

  • Podcasts
  • Coming Attractions
  • Reviews
  • Interviews
  • Commentary
  • The Arts
    • Performing Arts
      • Dance
      • Music
      • Theater
    • Other
      • Books
      • Film
      • Food
      • Television
      • Visual Arts
You are here: Home / Music / Jazz / Jazz Album and Concert Review: The Sylvie Courvoisier Trio — A Tight-Knit and Adventuresome Threesome

Jazz Album and Concert Review: The Sylvie Courvoisier Trio — A Tight-Knit and Adventuresome Threesome

October 5, 2020 Leave a Comment

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.

Share
Tweet
Pin
Share

By: Steve Feeney Filed Under: Featured, Jazz, Music, Review Tagged: Drew Gress, Free Hoops, Intakt Records, Kenny Wollesen, Roulette, Steve Feeney, Sylvie Courvoisier

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Search

Popular Posts

  • Music Review/Interview: Foxes & Fossils — 50 Million YouTube Views Can’t Be Wrong Even though they are a cover band, Foxes and Fossils' p... posted on February 1, 2021
  • Television Review: “Strip Down, Rise Up” — The Liberation of Pole Dancing An intriguing look at smashing the patriarchy through t... posted on February 1, 2021
  • Film Review: “The World to Come” — A Haunting Female Frontier Romance The excitement of these films – perhaps the word frisso... posted on February 5, 2021
  • Concert Review: Tedeschi Trucks Band — Fiery “Fireside Sessions” With the “Fireside Sessions,” Tedeschi and Trucks have... posted on February 21, 2021
  • Film Commentary: What If a Man Insinuates That a Woman Is NOT Attractive? And in Print? Variety is wrong and cowardly to give in to Cary Mullig... posted on January 31, 2021

Social

Follow us:

Follow the Conversation

  • Ken Field February 26, 2021 at 3:36 pm on Music Profile: Violinist, Teacher, Composer, and Arranger Mimi Rabson — Making a Life in ArtNice writing about a wonderful & important musician! Wanted to add that my composition "Sensorium", referenced above in Rabson's discography,...
  • Steve Elman February 26, 2021 at 2:40 pm on Arts Reconsideration: The 1971 Project — Celebrating a Great Year In Music (February Entry)Good catch! The phrase should have been "modal harmonies and open structures," and I've made the change in the text....
  • Kemp Harris February 26, 2021 at 10:57 am on Jazz Album Review: Kemp Harris’s “Live at The Bird SF” — An Infectious HybridHello Daniel, I cannot thank you enough for this review of my CD, "Kemp Harris/Live @ The Bird:SF" I appreciate...
  • Allen Michie February 25, 2021 at 10:27 pm on World Music Album Review: Michael Wimberly’s “Afrofuturism” — Journeying Forward Through DiversityThe gratitude is all mine! Thanks for putting together this great assembly of master musicians and letting them mix it...
  • Mark Favermann February 25, 2021 at 1:21 pm on Visual Arts Review: Trump Likes Minimalism? Really?President Joe Biden reverses Trump architecture executive order. Feb. 24, 2021

Footer

  • About Us
  • Advertising/Underwriting
  • Syndication
  • Media Resources
  • Editors and Contributors

We Are

Boston’s online arts magazine since 2007. Powered by 70+ experts and writers.

Follow Us

Monthly Archives

Categories

"Use the point of your pen, not the feather." -- Jonathan Swift

Copyright © 2021 · The Arts Fuse - All Rights Reserved · Website by Stephanie Franz