A World of Piano: Sylvie Courvoisier

Sylvie Courvoisier (piano)

Pianist-composer Sylvie Courvoisier, a Brooklyn-based native of Switzerland and winner of Germany’s International Jazz Piano Prize in 2022, has earned renown for balancing two distinct worlds: the deep, richly detailed chamber music of her European roots and the grooving, hook-laden sounds of the avant-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 epochal Rite of Spring in league with new-music pianist Cory Smythe as she is when improvising with her own acclaimed jazz trio, featuring bassist Drew Gress and drummer Kenny Wollesen.

Then there are her ear-opening collaborations with such luminaries as John Zorn, Wadada Leo Smith, Evan Parker, Ikue Mori, Ned Rothenberg, Fred Frith, Andrew Cyrille, Mark Feldman, Christian Fennesz, 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. NPR’s Kevin Whitehead has encapsulated her art in an evocative way: “Some pianists approach the instrument like it’s a cathedral. Sylvie Courvoisier treats it like a playground.”

Courvoisier’s newest ensemble — the atmospheric, shape-shifting Chimaera — will be touring across Europe from July to September 2024, performing music from Courvoisier’s double-disc Chimaera album, released in November 2023 via the Swiss label Intakt. The virtuoso touring group features Christian Fennesz on electric guitar/effects, Nate Wooley on trumpet and Gress on double-bass alongside a pair of percussionists: Nasheet Waits on drums and Wollesen on both drums and vibraphone. Courvoisier has played notably in the Big Apple and beyond with Wooley and Waits, while Gress and Wollesen are the longtime partners in her aforementioned trio. Chimaera’s wildcard is Fennesz, the Austrian artist known for his ambient-textured work both solo and in league with such figures as the late, great composer-pianist Ryuichi Sakamoto and avant-pop icon David Sylvian, as well as with the ECM-affiliated band Food. The lineup on the Intakt recording of Chimaera is subtly different than the touring group, as it features two trumpets instead of two percussionists, with Wadada Leo Smith in place of Waits. Regardless of the differences in instrumentation, the Chimaera project presents a reverie of sound unlike any Courvoisier has crafted before: spacious and shimmering, mysterious and mesmerizing.

She currently teaches at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in NYC.