Trust: A Conversation with Sylvie Courvoisier and Mary Halvorson

An artistic spark leads humanity to create wonders of beauty. Philosophers will debate the origins of this creative impetus.  Some credit a higher, more divine power. But, regardless of its source, it is indisputable that there is a force that drives toward creation, one that transcends cultural norms, stylistic restrictions, and temporal limitations. Consider how cultures spread all over the globe – before the advent of modern instruments – all saw some need to take the substances of nature and turn them into instruments. People in places as diverse as Turkey, Russia, Greece, Ireland, and throughout the Americas took bones and skins of the animals they consumed and turned them into rhythmic tools. There was an undeniable need to say something through music, even if technology did not easily cooperate. Another commonality across cultures is the importance of interpersonal communication through sound. Music has never been a solitary exercise. Even in “solo” performances, there are at least two figures: the artist and the listener. Like any other relationship, investing time and effort inevitably produces richer and fuller results than mere cursory conversations. As such, in our modern system that often emphasizes novel collaborations, a secret power hides in further delving into existing relationships. Bone Bells (Pyroclastic, 2025) by Sylvie Courvoisier and Mary Halvorson excels as a recording because of both artists’ open willingness to commit to these shared musical expressions. 

The duo’s third recorded outing, Bone Bells, finds the pianist and guitarist increasingly moving as a coherent unit while retaining the power of their idiosyncratic voices. Crop Circles (Relative Pitch, 2017) was a place of initial exploration: an arena where the artists test one another’s already far-reaching boundaries and how they are sonically compatible. The follow-up Searching for the Disappeared Hour (Pyroclastic, 2021) presents lessons learned from these initial explorations. But Bone Bells finds them at the furthest depths yet in their ongoing musical conversations. 

The result is shifting textures and ideas that move freely along skeletal sketches rather than hard-set pieces. The unpredictability of the affair makes Bone Bells a delight to listen to as you continue to find surprise in your surroundings. With “Beclouded,” a dreamy atmosphere becomes stormy with a thunderous torrential downpour of notes only to abruptly drift back to a more ethereal environment. And in “Unfolding Secret,” the timbre of Courvoisier’s altered piano evokes a highly spun-up clock clanging fractured chimes. The piece is abstract and unstable until its folk-bluesy melody gradually emerges. Further underscoring the album’s focus on the primacy of the conversation itself over a pre-set destination, each track also ends seemingly abruptly instead of resolving to a natural end. We are witnessing an intimate real-time look into the artists’ uncovering of bright moments of their shared creativity. 

We sat down with Courvoisier and Halvorson to discuss Bone Bells and how their working relationship continues to evolve. This conversation does not aim to provide insight into what brings them together or their processes. You can read more about both of those things here. Instead, we seek to provide a glimpse into where that relationship stands today, with a hint of perhaps where it has yet to go. 

PostGenre: Before getting into the recording, would you mind talking about the recently departed Susan Alcorn a bit? Mary, you performed with Susan a lot, and, Sylvie, you had a duo with her. Any thoughts you would like to share about Susan?

Mary Halvorson: Oh, yeah, I would say that she has been pretty constantly on my mind. She was very close to my heart. She played in my octet, and I played as a duo with her. I also played in her band. We actually had a gig coming up at Big Ears when I found out she had passed. I found out she had died when I was in Europe to start a tour. Her husband called me and told me, about half an hour before my sound check on the first day of the tour, that she had passed. Finding out she died left me in total shock. I don’t think anybody was expecting it. When stuff like this happens out of the blue, it’s really hard. It was very much a struggle to get through that first week. It was such a huge loss. Susan was a totally unique and brilliant musician who did things no one else could. But she was also a wonderful person. I loved working with her. 

I will say, however, that it has been nice to see the real outpouring of love from the music community. She was a deeply loved musician in the community. I’ve seen a lot of things written about her, tributes to her, and obituaries in all kinds of different magazines. Hopefully, there’ll be a lot of tributes to her in the future as well. The one solace to me is that her music lives on. We still have her music to listen to and to keep with us. 

Sylvie Courvoisier: I actually played with Susan only twice, as a duo, as you mentioned. So, I didn’t know her as well as Mary. But I love her music and her playing, for sure. She was totally unique, very funny, and always super sweet. A very loving person. And what she did with the pedal steel [guitar] is so unique. 

MH: Totally unique, yeah. She was such a special improviser. She fully had her own sound and was also very unpredictable. With my octet, she provided a spark musically. And I love the sound of her instrument and the fact that she’d been able to take the pedal steel and bring it into our weird world of improvised music. It’s been a great pleasure to listen to her and to have worked with her. There’s nobody else like her. 

PG: While both of you play instruments – piano and guitar- more common in improvised music than the pedal steel, you have very distinctive voices on those instruments. The distinctiveness is even more apparent because of the incorporation of methods to alter the natural sound of your instrument – Mary often uses pedals, and Sylvie does not hesitate to use preparations on the piano. Do you see a parallel between those two approaches since both are forms of manipulating the natural sound of your instrument, albeit through different methods?

SC:  Yeah, I think so. For me, extended piano technique extends the sound of the piano. And I think for Mary, it is the same with her pedals.

MH:  For sure. I mean, I’ve always thought of pedals as ornamentations; just an extra element you can add to enhance the natural acoustic sound of the instrument.  To me, it seems like piano preparations function in the same way because there is the bare instrument, and then you are using things you can do to mess with that bare sound. 

SC: Yeah. And it’s funny because during rehearsal, Mary never uses pedals, and I don’t use prepared piano. Both are extensions of our instruments that we use more for gigs or performances. 

MH: Exactly. But then the pedals and preparations ultimately become a fully integrated part of the set. I remember when we played a gig in Geneva [Switzerland], my pedal completely melted down and didn’t work. It wasn’t that I couldn’t play the set without the pedals, but they’d become such a part of these songs that I remember I felt I was very much missing something without it. It almost becomes part of the composition.

PG: Bone Bells is your third duo album together. What do you feel most sets it apart from the prior two?

MH: For me, the biggest difference comes in the fact this is our third album together. Since our first one, we’ve worked together so much. And during that time, we have become, as a duo, more and more of an established thing. For example, we wrote all of the compositions on this album specifically for this duo, and that was certainly not the case with our first one. With all the history of us playing together, I think we were able to fine-tune and write things that we felt both worked for the duo and would allow us to explore new territory and try out new things. I think we’re very comfortable with each other. We’re very close as friends and have worked together so much, so there’s a real ease in our working relationship that allows us the ability to greatly experiment and try things. We also have good communication. I think there’s a lot of musical trust between us. A lot of the music on the album is quite challenging, but we were able to fully work it out in rehearsal. I feel like this album gets closest in terms of what we’re trying to accomplish as a duo. 

SC: I totally agree with Mary. I also feel that this record is more intimate and maybe less showy than the other two. And I like the variety of tunes on this record. I think each tune is very different. It all ended up working very well.

MH: The variety of compositions also came from our working together a lot. With that background, we were able to think more about range compositionally and were more willing to take more risks and try things that we hadn’t before. As an example, “Nags Head Valse” is a piece Sylvie wrote that is pretty different from a lot of her other compositions. I feel like with that one, she was looking for what we hadn’t tried yet and trying to find ways to bring new elements to the music because we’re so much more comfortable together this time around. 

SC: Yes, I feel that the compositions are much more different across the album, but we are also more complementary of one another in a way.

PG: In terms of the relationship between composition and improvisation more generally, Sylvie, your group, Chimera, includes Wadada Leo Smith. Wadada avoids the term improvisation because he sees it as no different from composition in any meaningful way. Do you both see improvisation in the same way or do you see it as something different than composition? 

SC: Wadada uses the term “create,” and I completely understand that. Especially nowadays, I feel like people give the term improvisation less respect. But, in reality, improvisation is just like precomposition in the sense that it is an act of creation. I think there is something more magical about the word “create” compared to “improvise.” I think if you work with the term “create” in mind instead of the labels of “composition” and “improvisation,” you get closer to what you are actually doing. 

MH: It’s interesting. I didn’t know that about Wadada and how he uses the term “create” instead. I guess I do see improvisation and composition as different, to some degree. I’ll sit down to compose with the intent of writing a piece of music that’s going to be played the way I wrote it. And that is not the process I follow with improvisation. But I do think of improvisation as spontaneous composition. I see the processes of composition and improvisation as related but not the same.  

PG: When we spoke about your last duo record – Searching for the Disappeared Hour – you both mentioned how what you enjoy most about the duo was how you push each other into different creative spaces. Do you feel you are still pushing each other into these newer spaces even though you are more familiar with each other’s approaches to music than you were a few years ago? 

SC:  I feel we’re still pushing. I don’t think we’re in a position where we feel we can fully predict what each other will do. Of course, I know Mary’s language a little better and have a better idea of where she may go. But every gig is different, and we dare to try new stuff. That’s part of why it’s fun to go on the road. Every night, we will try to approach our tunes differently and try to find different ways to improvise on them. 

We also allow ourselves to make mistakes, which I think is very important. We might try something, and it doesn’t come out perfectly. But our openness to trying is very important because it allows us to keep trying to surprise each other and not fall into any routine or expectation. 

MH: Yeah. I think if we wanted to, we could get comfortable, but we don’t want to get comfortable.

PG: And do those different worlds you each come from – Sylvie has more of a classical background and Mary more of a jazz one – tie into the album’s title? Bone Bells was named after a phrase in Trust (Riverhead, 2022) by Hernan Diaz. Diaz’s book talks about disparate perceptions people have of the same story. Is that a parallel to you coming from different sound worlds?

MH: I think, in a way, it kind of is, but if you think about it, the same thought also applies to how each listener perceives the same piece of music differently. Two people could be listening to the same album but hearing it quite differently and feeling different emotions about it. The song may resonate with one person and not at all with another. That difference in perspectives applies to all music. That thought wasn’t the reason we chose the album’s title. We didn’t choose the title to be taken literally. But thinking about it in hindsight, I think that thought does make a lot of sense. People coming from different perspectives can affect a perceived sound or reality of the situation, for sure. 

PG: In terms of connections that may or may not have been intentional, one of the songs on Bone Bells is called “Beclouded,” and Mary, the last album by your sextet right before this one, was Cloudward (Nonesuch, 2024). Any connection between the two? 

MH:  Not specifically. But when I title songs, I tend to go back to the same words. I’ve certainly noted before that I’ll reuse words from something I’ve used elsewhere. I guess I like the word “cloud.” I like how it sounds. So it probably just shows my proclivities. But no, there’s no direct connection. 

PG: And for perhaps a third unintentional connection, it is interesting that each of the three duo albums featured circles on their album art. The circular imagery is obvious in the artwork for Crop Circles. Searching for the Disappeared Hour’s album cover features the imagery of a round clock and its reflection. And Bone Bells’ album design features many circles as well. Is there something symbolic about the circular shape when it comes to this duo?  

MH: That is so funny. I never thought about that or noticed it. Did you, Sylvie? 

SC: Oh yeah, I didn’t think about that. 

MH: But could you talk about the album art for Bone Bells? I don’t know how much it relates to circles, but it is interesting. 

SC: The artwork is by a Serbian artist named Joskin Siljan. The photographer for the album, Mario Del Curto, is a friend of mine. He knows a lot about outsider art and has written books about and done interviews with outsider artists. I love outsider art. When Mary and I were looking for a cover for the album, I asked Mario for suggestions, and gave Mary and me a few to choose from and the one we picked is the one we ended up with on the album.

PG: Tied to art outside of the music medium, one of the pieces on Bone Bells, “Esmeralda,” was named after a work by the Dutch sculpturist Cornelis Zitman. And we already mentioned how the album’s title comes from literature. Do you both typically draw inspiration from artistic forms outside of music?

SC: Yes, for sure. Inspiration can come from a movie. Or a book. Or a feeling. It can be from something in nature. It can be a specific person. Sometimes, I’m even more inspired by something outside of music than another piece of music. 

MH: Totally. And that is true even if the connection isn’t always obvious. You can get creative ideas from all sorts of things. Sometimes, they’re literal and direct influences. Other times, they may be something that more generally inspires you to try something new, gets you into a creative headspace, or makes you see something differently. Inspiration can come from anywhere. 

‘Bone Bells’ is out now on Pyroclastic Records. It can be purchased on Bandcamp. More information about Courvoisier and Halvorson are available on their respective websites.

Photo credit: Veronique Hoegger