Melding of Worlds: A Conversation with Sylvie Courvoisier and Mary Halvorson

Over the past two and a half decades, pianist-composer Sylvie Courvoisier has established a formidable career in combining concepts from European chamber music and avant-garde jazz. In the process, she has collaborated with such other luminaries as John Zorn, Wadada Leo Smith, Evan Parker, Ken Vandermark, and Mary Halvorson. Like Courvoisier, guitarist-composer Halvorson has a distinctive voice on her instrument, as her music is shaped by not only avant-garde jazz but a diverse palette that includes flamenco, noise, rock, and psychedelia. Since studying with Anthony Braxton, she has developed herself as a powerful force in creative music, even earning a MacArthur “Genius” Grant for music in 2019. Courvoisier and Halvorson released their first duo recording, Crop Circles (Relative Pitch, 2017) to much critical acclaim. As one writer noted, that album is “a sublime collection of shapes and figures, one that is alternately awe-inspiring and inscrutable … [that is] irrefutable proof… of the creative prowess of these two musical heavyweights.” Yet, their follow-up, Searching for the Disappeared Hour (Pyroclastic, 2021), is more realized.

Time spent by the two examining their strengths, weaknesses, and methods of communication produces an album that is mesmerizing. While Crop Circles reshaped other tunes to fit the occasion, Searching for the Disappeared Hour was written by both artists specifically for the duo, allowing it to make unique use of both instruments’ timbres and colors. It is unlike anything else in either artists’ impressive discographies. We sat down with both Courvoisier and Halvorson to discuss their compositional and recording processes and the piano-guitar duo format more generally.

PostGenre: When did you two first meet and, since it may be a different answer, do you remember when you first encountered each other’s music? 

Sylvie Courvoisier: I heard Mary for the first time in a small club in Brooklyn many years ago when she was super young, maybe in her early 20s; she already had a pretty strong musical identity, I was impressed. We have also been in the same social circles for several years. Our first performance together was at the Cornelia Street Café, but I can’t remember exactly which year. It was about four or five years ago.  

Mary Halvorson: I’ve been a fan of Sylvie’s music for a long time and, as she said, we are kind of in the same scene. So, I had heard her play many times by the time we got together to play. I think the first time we hung out was at the Saalfelden Jazz Festival [Saalfelden, Austria] around 2010. For some reason, that sticks out in my mind as the first time I met Sylvie and hung out with her. We started playing together probably about a year before our first duet record [Crop Circles] came out. I’ve always been very bad at dating things, but that sounds about right.   

PG: What do you appreciate most about each other’s musical ideas or approaches? 

MH: Sylvie pushes me. Her music is often very difficult to perform. [laughing]. Her approach is very different from mine. Being able to get inside her head for a minute and see how she is thinking, how she writes, and her intentions with a piece is fascinating. Working with my peers and other people I have played with has been the primary way I have developed and grown as an artist. I find it inspiring to get a chance not only to play music with Sylvie but to play her compositions in particular and see how she operates and thinks musically. 

SC: Yeah, it’s the same for me. Mary has a different approach than I do. She has some more caution and structure in her compositions. My compositions also take a little more influence from classical music while hers draw more from jazz but have these sinewed lines that I like a lot. I like to play her music because it often pushes me in other directions than where I would normally focus. 

PG: Searching for the Disappeared Hour is coming out about four years after Crop Circles. How do you feel your music has changed as a duo between the two recordings? 

SC: For this new album, we wrote the music specifically for the duo, which allowed us to keep things specific to the duo in mind. Our earlier songs, including those on Crop Circles, were not written specifically for the duo. Also, with the new album, we knew each other’s language better. I like the new record much more than the first one just because I feel like our ideas are more worked out. We figured out what our strengths and weaknesses are when we work together and incorporated those into the compositions. This time, we also had a clearer picture of what we wanted to achieve.  

MH: Yeah, you know, I received a comment from someone in the audience at Other Minds that they had a hard time determining who wrote which piece, which I think is a good thing.  On the first record, we had mostly recycled some pieces we had played in other groups. But for this record, we wrote music specifically with the duo in mind. I think because we knew how we sound as a duo a little better than we did before, it became easier to write. It also became easier to experiment with different stuff. As an example, Sylvie wrote a couple of pieces that use a lot of guitar harmonics and false harmonics. I don’t do false harmonics too often on guitar so that aspect presented a nice challenge for me to delve into a different aspect of my playing. Another cool thing about Searching for the Disappeared Hour is that by the time we recorded, we had already spent time working on the pieces. So, on some of my tunes, Sylvie would fill in the piano harmony beyond what I wrote out. It felt like a collaborative process even though we wrote the compositions separately.  

SC: Maybe that’s why the album became such a good blend of our sounds and ideas. But I also think Mary has pushed me creatively into a different space. I can’t even explain exactly what that means. But her compositions are “very Mary” and I love that. I love to go to her world and put my world – my harmony and ideas- into it. It was a lot of fun to do that.  

MH: Likewise. I feel like this album is a melding of worlds.  

SC:  I think the album becomes more and more like chamber music in terms of our increased focus on dynamics and little details.  

MH: I feel like Sylvie’s use of dynamics in music is nuanced in a way that a lot of stuff coming from “jazz” isn’t. I enjoyed getting to work with a wide range of dynamic contrasts, thinking about how much that adds to the music and developing that aspect. Like Sylvie said, maybe it makes the recording sound a little more chamberesque.  

PG: To kind of build off of the chamber-like quality of the album, you both have a fairly extensive history of recording in duets with a violinist/violist. Sylvie has released many albums with Mark [Feldman] over the years and Mary has recorded with Jessica Pavone several times. Do you feel like that somewhat shared experience has shaped your music as a duo? 

MH: You know, it’s funny. I never even thought about that, but it is true. We both worked quite extensively in duos with another string player. I haven’t thought about it consciously, but I will say that playing in duos is one of my favorite contexts to work in. I’ve done several duos over the years and they’ve been a nice way to get to know someone and dialogue with that person’s specific language.  

SC: Yeah, I agree with Mary. [laughing].  It’s fantastic to have a combination of guitar and piano specifically. They’re both harmonic instruments and I can sometimes double on lines from the guitar. It allows me to provide a different counterpoint. It’s very different from playing with another piano. But, in a way, it’s also similar to playing with another pianist. You make much more complex music using more harmonics and chords. I’m also a big fan of how the guitar-piano duo format was used in Undercurrent (United Artists, 1962) by Jim Hall and Bill Evans.  

MH: Me too! I grew up listening to that album. 

SC: On it, Jim Hall is playing a lot of harmonics that are interesting. Before recording Searching for the Disappeared Hour, I kept thinking how much I would like to explore some ideas from that recording with Mary. I love Mary’s effects and seeing how we were able to combine them with guitar harmonics. 

MH: There is definitely a wide palette with guitar and piano. I think aside from a handful of records, Undercurrent being one of them, the guitar-piano duo as a concept is underexplored. Part of that could be because of a false notion some have that guitar and piano may get in the way of each other. I’m thinking mostly of being in college and teaching jazz combos where there are two guitarists and a pianist and no one knows what to do with that. But I think that type of instrumentation is actually a good thing and not something to be avoided. I’ve always loved playing with pianists and have played with quite a few. As far as Sylvie specifically, there’s such a wide sonic range between her playing and the stuff she does inside the piano. There are so many textual possibilities to explore and a lot of common ground between guitar and piano.  

PG: In terms of Sylvie’s going in the piano itself, on “Four-point Play” she has her hand in the piano and is striking and plucking the strings. It is a little difficult, at times, to tell whether a specific sound is her playing with the strings in the piano or Mary on guitar with effects.   

MH: Yeah, at some point Sylvie is strumming the piano strings. She’s strumming chords on the inside of the piano, which is very guitaristic. I thought that was very cool.  

SC: I have strummed on the piano for other projects in the past but it sounds particularly great alongside the guitar, for sure.  

PG: A little earlier, you both mentioned Undercurrent. Are there any other albums that stand out to you in the piano-guitar duo format? 

MH: Bill Evans and Jim Hall’s collaboration is the main one that I can think of, but I think the main influences for Searching for the Disappeared Hour are not just piano-guitar duos. Instead, it is influenced by several different things. A lot of my compositions on the album are shaped by whatever I was listening to at the moment or things I have listened to so much that they are ingrained in me. That could be anything; folk music, rock and roll, jazz, new music, really anything.  

SC: I think another album worth noting, in addition to Undercurrent, is the duet between Julian Lage and Fred Hersch that came out a few years ago [Free Flying (Palmetto, 2013)].  

MH: Oh yeah! I haven’t heard that one yet but did see they are playing at the [Village] Vanguard together soon. 

SC: It is a good album. Very different.  There is a great counterpoint among other things.  

MH: I will definitely check that out. I love both of their music.     

PG: As far as other influences, “Golden Proportion” gradually morphs into Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata.” How did that come about? 

SC: Mary wrote the tune in C# minor and as soon as I played it, it made me think of “Moonlight Sonata.” Her melody did not sound similar, but the tonality and the moving left hand did. There was something similar there. And so, I decided to quote the melody of “Moonlight Sonata.” I like to quote from many different things. Why not quote Beethoven? 

MH: [Laughing] 

SC: And after we improvised, that is where we went.  

MH: It wasn’t part of the composition just something Sylvie had heard coming out of my composition.  

PG:  For most of the song, “Moonlight Sonata” is hinted at but the connection is very clear by the song’s end.   

SC: Yes, I play around it for most of the song. But then I decided to just really quote it so everyone can recognize it. I love when people quote from other music. I am not afraid to do it and can do it with Messiaen or Beethoven or tunes I know by other composers. I do it less with standards just because that’s not my specialty. I don’t quote too often, but I do sometimes. 

MH: You know, it’s funny. People always tell me I’ve quoted things, but it’s not something I do on purpose. I think I might just do it by accident. For me, it’s jazz standards and not the more classical stuff. I just have all these jazz standards in my head. Sometimes people even tell me I quote songs that I haven’t heard before. So, it’s almost a type of language that ends up coming out more in a melodic type of playing.  

PG: On the song “Torrential,” one senses a Folk influence at times. Do you give much thought to genres and preconceptions some people have on how certain music “should” sound?

MH: I don’t pay much attention to those sorts of things. I just play whatever I’m hearing. What you are probably hearing with the folk thing is that I am using an arpeggiated chord sequence with a pretty melody on top. That is all I was thinking about with that song. But in terms of genre, I don’t think about it as a concept. I just wanted to write something that I think sounds interesting and that I could envision me and Sylvie playing regardless of what it might or might not be referencing in terms of style.  

SC: I agree and think that the deemphasis of genre is also maybe a reflection on the strength of music today.  In the ‘80s, for example, artists were often somewhat limited. If you were playing free jazz, you felt pressure to not focus too much on melody or harmony. But now you don’t have those pressures as much. I think that’s part of why it is really hard to classify this record. Is it jazz? Is it contemporary music? Is it something else entirely? I think we borrow from all different styles.   

PG: Why do you think it is more acceptable now to be broader in focus than it was in the past? 

MH: I don’t know. I’ve never really felt like I had to stick with a particular style or idea. A lot of that openness comes from my teachers, particularly Anthony Braxton. Anthony has never cared much about specific styles and is influenced by all types of things. From him, I learned that it was normal to take such a broad approach. You would respect traditions but at the same time, you would push the boundaries of those traditions. You would break the traditions apart and do whatever you wanted. That approach has always come naturally to me because of the way I was taught. 

SC: For me, it has been the same thing. Maybe I have less interest in pop music or some other things. But when it comes down to it, it is all music.  

PG: “Moonbow” was based on a mistake you two had made while recording and end up liking the result. How do you see the role of mistakes in the creative process? 

SC: For me, a mistake is often the start of a new piece. Even today, I was trying to write some new pieces but my mind was blank. So, I just put my hands on the piano and wrote down the first chord that I happened, by chance, to play. Sometimes I find good sounds by chance or making a mistake.  

MH: I think not all mistakes sound good, but occasionally one does. To me, the challenge is to recognize when you have made a mistake – actually, it doesn’t have to be a mistake, it can just be anything you haven’t done before – and then to take the time to stop and think about ways to develop that idea more rather than just skipping into the next thing.  

PG:  Somewhat related, with “Party Dress,” you were not even sure you were recording at the time. Do you feel like you play differently when you know you are recording compared to when you think you are not? 

SC: That is a good question.  

MH: Possibly. I think there is a sort of casualness to that song because we were just casually playing. We weren’t thinking of whether something makes sense as a composition or how we would get in or out of it. We were just playing. We ended up liking it, but it could have instead ended up sounding not very good. But there is something to be said about a casual conversation that wasn’t supposed to be broadcast to an audience.  

SC: I agree. 

PG: You have both done a lot musically in your careers thus far. Is there an area of music that you haven’t explored but may interest you? 

SC: For me, it’s very clear that is the case with pop music. I know nothing about pop music and I don’t pay much attention to it. I feel ashamed by that lack of knowledge because sometimes people will ask me about some pop musicians and I will have no idea who they are, whether a rapper or a singer or whatever. 

MH: But is pop music something you want to explore or do you have no interest in it? 

SC: I think I might, one day, explore it. But it’s funny because I’ve never been into pop music. My brother, for instance, used to be a big pop fan but it just never interested me. Now, though I feel like I may be more open to it.  

MH: I know some pop music. I wouldn’t say I’m nearly as versed in current pop music as most people, but I am aware of it and know some of it. I am open to it as well. I’m open to everything musically. I just wouldn’t want to close off to one area or another. I wouldn’t want to only provide experimental music, even if my music does tend to maybe lean a little bit more experimentally. But while I am always open to ideas, I never think more than one project ahead. So, whatever my interest is now is likely what will show up on my next recording.  Maybe next year I will have a new idea. I love trying new things or working with new instrumentation or different bands. Just the nature of choosing different people and different instruments can push you into a new territory sometimes.  

Searching for the Disappeared Hour will be available on October 29, 2021, on Pyroclastic Records. It is available in CD or digital form on Bandcamp. 

More information on Sylvie is available on her website and Mary on hers.