Recently the Swiss improviser Sylvie Courvoisier was paid tribute to among others on the wonderful new Kris Davis trio album Run the Gauntlet
And this is its equal.
Just as adventurous Courvoisier isn’t afraid to go out far into the deeper waters of abstraction.
And yet there is a huge discipline, massive detail in the miniatures that emboss themselves on to your consciousness as you listen and a rippling energy to what’s here.
If you like the English pianist Julie Sassoon who lives in Germany and may even like Davis have been influenced by Courvoisier along the way then certainly the style here fits right in with such an approach. Also there is some commonality in approach with Marilyn Crispell.
Concision and power
Dedicatees include Wadada Leo Smith
Recorded in a Südwestrundfunk studio in Freiburg this year there are a lot of dedicatees paid homage to from Messiaen and Nancarrow to Mary Halvorson and the great trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith who is himself in the video above in a performance filmed last year with Courvoisier in the pianist’s group Chimaera.
And Courvoisier’s father is also a dedicatee making even more of a personal and familial connection in the roll call.
‘Ballade for My Dad’ is actually the longest piece of all.
Pieces are quite succinct but there is a great intensity to what the pianist manages to get across no matter what length they are measured by.
And on a track such as ‘Twisting Memories’ massive power is exerted too. That strength of purpose and clear sighted assault on the keys is impressive in terms of the gravity of expression. The sonics are very cleanly captured in the sound recording.
Courvoisier who was born in Lausanne 55 years ago has been making albums under her own name since the 1990s.
Music journalist Julia Neupert, in the sleeve notes, mentions that when the Steinway in the studio went out of tune due to the high humidity in the room and that the pianist adding prepared piano elements ”took out a colourful cloth bag from her pocket, filled to the brim with small bits of wood that she had hand-carved some time ago for the recording of a film score.”
Seek out Signs and Epigrams as a reasonable point of reference from her previous work and album that was issued on John Zorn’s Tzadik label in 2007 and definitely listen to both alongside the new Kris Davis for a bit of worthwhile time travelling that the digital age is so good at enabling.
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