Brooklyn-based, Swiss-born pianist and composer Sylvie Courvoisier’s ace foursome Amalthea — formerly known as Poppy Seeds — will embark on its second tour of Europe from April 24 to May 10, 2026, supporting the group’s debut studio album, to be recorded for Pyroclastic Records in spring 2025. This quartet features one of today’s great bass and drum combinations, Thomas Morgan and Dan Weiss, as well as rising vibraphonist Patricia Brennan. Reviewing the band’s concert at JazzFest Berlin last year, All About Jazz said: “The quartet allowed full rein to Courvoisier’s propulsive drive without sacrificing the complexity and risk-taking that makes her work so enthralling. Brennan’s playing involved unisons, solos of sparkling notes grounded by a deeper clang, or subtle pitch-bending electronics. Morgan and Weiss meshed both in jazzy pulse and discontinuous meter. But Courvoisier remained an engaging focal point, deploying rubbed piano sighs, poltergeist knocks and flamboyant crashes alongside passages of astounding feeling.” 

Along with interpreting the music of composers from Stravinsky to Zorn, Courvoisier leads a long-running jazz trio and plays in duos with such luminaries as Wadada Leo Smith and Mary Halvorson. Brennan, in addition to recording under her own name, has worked with such notables as Vijay Iyer and Michael Formanek. Morgan is one of the most in-demand bassists in progressive jazz, valued by the likes of Bill Frisell and Tyshawn Sorey. Another virtuoso on the New York scene, Weiss leads his own bands (from trio to large ensemble) and collaborates with such peers as Miles Okazaki and Rez Abbasi. Although a lineup of piano, vibraphone, bass and drums has been familiar to jazz fans since the days of the Modern Jazz Quartet, Courvoisier and her colleagues in this foursome will be exploring new possibilities of textural/harmonic richness. This is reflected in the band name Amalthea, inspired by the moniker for one of Jupiter’s moons (a rare object that radiates more energy than it receives from the Sun) as well as by the name of Zeus’s nurturing foster mother, a figure associated with the cornucopia of abundance.

— Bradley Bambarger