Sylvie Courvoisier

Sylvie Courvoisier (born 30 November 1968) is a composer, pianist, and improviser.

Among her many collaborations, she has: led a trio with Drew Gress (bass), Kenny Wollesen (drums); recorded duo and quartet albums with violinist Mark Feldman; and duo albums with Mary Halvorson, Cory Smythe, and Evan Parker.

Courvoisier received numerous awards including the German Jazz Prize, Piano International (2022), and the United States Artist Fellow (2020).

Courvoisier is on faculty at the School of Jazz (The New School).

Courvoisier, originally from Lausanne, Switzerland, has lived in Brooklyn, New York for years.

She has led several groups over the years, recorded 10 albums as a band leader, and appeared in about 50 albums (25 CDs as co-leader and 25 CDs as a side person) for different labels, notably ECM, Tzadik, and Intakt Records.

Sylvie Courvoisier has earned just renown for balancing two distinct worlds: the deep, richly detailed chamber music of her European roots and the grooving, hook-laden sounds of the downtown jazz scene in New York City, her home for more than two decades.

Few artists feel truly at ease in both concert halls and jazz clubs, playing improvised or composed music.

But Courvoisier – “a pianist of equal parts audacity and poise,” according to The New York Times – is as compelling when performing Stravinsky's iconic Rite of Spring in league with flamenco dancer-choreographer Israel Galván as she is when improvising with her own widely acclaimed jazz trio, featuring bassist Drew Gress and drummer Kenny Wollesen.

Then there are her ear-opening collaborations with such avant-jazz luminaries as John Zorn, Wadada Leo Smith, Evan Parker, Ikue Mori, Ellery Eskelin, Susie Ibarra, Fred Frith, Andrew Cyrille, Mark Feldman, Ken Vandermark, Nate Wooley and Mary Halvorson.

In music as in life, Courvoisier crosses borders with a creative spirit and a free mind; her music-making is as playful as it is intense, as steeped in tradition as it is questing and intrepid.

JazzTimes has said: “Courvoisier keeps you on the edge of your seat because it feels like the piano cannot contain her.

Her careening solos seem to overwhelm and overflow the keyboard and keep spilling.”

JazzTimes appreciated the mix of “eloquent silences” and “exotic ornaments” in the composed music, as well as “real, gorgeous melody.” About the improvised disc, the review concluded: “It's rare to hear modern classical music forged anew in the heat of improvisation, but that's exactly what Abaton does.” Two early albums as a leader saw Courvoisier leading the ensemble Ocre, releasing the albums Y2K (Enja, 2000) and Music for Barrel Organ, Piano, Tuba, and Percussion (Enja, 1997).

Courvoisier has been commissioned to write music for the theater, radio, and concert hall.

Her concert works include a Concerto for Electric Guitar and Chamber Orchestra, as well as Balbutiements for vocal quartet and soprano.

She has written to commissions from the Theatre Vidy-Lausanne, Pro Helvetia, and Germany's Donaueschingen Musiktage Festival.

All About Jazz hailed the Lonelyville suite as “fantastic and far-reaching.” In 2004, ECM released Courvoisier's double CD Abaton, which presented her compositions for a trio with Feldman and cellist Erik Friedlander on one disc and the trio's group improvisations on the other.

Avant-garde impresario John Zorn has described Courvoisier as “one of the most creative pianists in the downtown scene.” In recent years, Courvoisier's duo with violinist Mark Feldman toured Zorn's Bagatelles far and wide; they also recorded two albums of Zorn's music: Malphas (Tzadik, 2006) and Masada Recital (Tzadik, 2004).

For the album Lonelyville (Intakt, 2007), Courvoisier recorded a suite she composed for a quintet with Feldman, Mori, cellist Vincent Courtois, and drummer Gerald Cleaver.

She won the Grand Prix de la Fondation Vaudoise Pour la Culture (2010), as well as an award from the New York Foundation for the Arts (2013) and Switzerland's Prix des Jeunes Créateurs (1996).

Courvoisier's discography includes more albums with Feldman, including Live at the Theatre Vidy-Lausanne (Intakt, 2013), Oblivia (Tzadik, 2010) and Music for Violin & Piano (Avan, 1999).

Courvoisier's first album with Gress and Wollesen, Double Windsor (Tzadik), was another hit with critics, being named one of the best albums of 2014 by both Slate and New York City Jazz Record; it also received the “CHOC” from Jazz Magazine and Jazzman in France.

International Piano magazine hailed Double Windsor as “a highly original recording, boldly juxtaposing the freely improvised and the through-composed, and crackling with energy… Courvoisier's trio drives its intricate interactions through every tricky twist and tumble in exhilarating fashion.”

Another of Courvoisier's most fruitful artistic relationships is with Israel Galván, the Spanish dancer and choreographer.

They have created several projects together over a decade, including La Curva, Arena and the evening-length, improvisation-laced Cast-a-Net.

Courvoisier and Feldman also co-led a quartet that toured the world and recorded three albums: Birdies for Lulu (Intakt, 2014, featuring bassist Scott Colley and drummer Billy Mintz), Hotel du Nord (Intakt, 2011, with bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Gerry Hemingway) and To Fly To Steal (Intakt, 2010, with Morgan and Hemingway).

With reed player Ned Rothenberg, Courvoisier recorded the fully improvised trio disc In Cahoots (Clean Feed, 2016), a trio with Mark Feldman, and more recently Lockdown ( Clean Feed, 2021), a trio with Julian Sartorius

They released the album Crop Circles in 2017 via Relative Pitch.

Dusted and All About Jazz gave the disc glowing reviews, as did several European publications.

And DownBeat set up its four-star review of the album by describing Courvoisier and Halvorson as “two of New York's most distinctive improvisers,” going on to praise the music's “deft, interactive intimacy” and the duo's way of “coming together and then drifting apart with unspoken grace… always serving the cumulative sound but remaining very much themselves.” Courvoisier and Halvorson's new release Searching for the Disappeared Hour (2021, Pyroclastic Records) was recognized as best album of 2021 by the NPR and the New York City Jazz Records.

The latter was produced in 2018 at Switzerland's Théâtre du Jorat and Festival Les Jardins Musicaux, with Courvoisier's music performed with the pianist alongside Evan Parker (saxophone), Mark Feldman (violin) and Ikue Mori (electronics).

Courvoisier's latest collaboration with Galván is La Consagraciòn de la Primavera: a program that combines a two-piano interpretation of the original score for piano four-hands of Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring) with an original, complementary two-piano score by Courvoisier: Spectro.

Courvoisier, alongside piano partner Cory Smythe, premiered the program with Galván in November 2019 at the Théâtre Vidy in Lausanne and in January 2020 at the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris.

She has been performing with this project again after the pandemic break.

Among Courvoisier's key duo partners is guitarist Mary Halvorson.

Their most recent album – Time Gone Out, released by Intakt in 2019 – earned a rave in JazzTimes, with the review singling out Courvoisier's pianism as “staggering… She draws on both low-end thunder and upper-register lyricism, often simultaneously.” DownBeat had further praise, saying that along with the album's poetic intensity and sheer virtuosity, “there is such a playfulness to what they're doing that it's easy to be drawn into the music.”

The Guardian described the band as “part contemporary-classical chamber group and part progressive jazz band… Composition and improvisation held in balance by maestros of the game.” Courvoisier and Feldman also recorded two fully improvised quartet albums: with saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock and drummer Tom Rainey on TISM (RogueArt, 2019), as well as with Evan Parker and Ikue Mori on Miller's Tale (Intakt, 2016).

Courvoisier's third album with trio mates Gress and Wollesen is Free Hoops,( intakt 2020) was acclaimed best of 2020 in different jazz magazines, Salt Peanuts, etc.The Sylvie Courvoisier Trio's previous album – D’Agala (Intakt) – garnered a four-star review in DownBeat, while JazzTimes declared the record to be “a wonderland of piano-trio surrealism that is nonetheless grounded in rhythmic earthiness.” It was ranked as one of the best jazz albums of 2018 by The New York Times and Los Angeles Times, as well as New York City Jazz Record.

Courvoisier has been honored with such awards as United States Artist Fellow (2020), the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists (2018), the Swiss Music Prize (2018), and the SUISA Prize for Jazz (2017).