sylvie courvoisier/Mary Halvorson duo

SYLVIE COURVOISIER piano
MARY HALVORSON guitar

Albums

  • album cover Bone Bells

    Bone Bells

    Pyroclastic Records, 2025

    Download Bone Bells Booklet - 2024

  • Album cover SEARCHING FOR THE DISAPPEARED HOUR

    SEARCHING FOR THE DISAPPEARED HOUR

    Pyroclastic Records, 2024

  • Album cover CROP CIRCLES

    CROP CIRCLES

    Relative Pitch Records, 2017

REVIEWS

BONE BELLS

  • Jazzwise
    by Selwyn Harris
    "A purposeful, gripping dialogue is heightened by both the flexibility and inventive responsiveness of their dual roles… one of the most inspired and kaleidoscopic contemporary jazz pairings in recent times.”

  • The Wire
    by Stewart Smith
    “On their third album together, Sylvie Courvoisier and Mary Halvorson take their duo language to new heights of fluency and sophistication. As I noted in The Wire 454 of this album’s predecessor, 2021’s Searching For The Disappeared Hour, the duo’s avant garde chamber jazz is unashamedly romantic, going as far as quoting Beethoven. The integration of such elements into a contemporary language is thrilling – beauty made new.”

  • MasJazzDigital.com
    by Eduardo de Simone

  • Paris-Move.com
    by Thierry De Clemensat

  • AllAboutJazz.com
    by Dan McClenaghan

  • BestofJazz.org
    “...a stunning dialogue between two of the most inventive voices in contemporary music….Bone Bells evokes an enigmatic sonic world—where structure and abstraction, beauty and discord, all exist in perfect tension.”  

  • GlideMagazine.com
    by Jim Hynes
    "Its ebbs and flows, the juxtaposition of the strident or haunting with the melodic and joyous, will captivate you."

  • JazzQuad.ru
    "The performers build complex structures, where dynamics often fade into the background, giving way to the beauty of the sound and the almost telepathic interaction of the voices of both instruments."

  • RadioFrance.fr by Nicolas Pommaret, Au Cover Du Jazz

SEARCHING FOR THE DISAPPEARED HOUR

  • The New York Times
    by Giovanni Russonello
    “Sylvie Courvoisier and Mary Halvorson are contemporary improvisers who approach abstraction from two different angles: Courvoisier as a pianist at the bridge between free jazz and European classical music, and Halvorson as a deconstructive guitar improviser, strongly affiliated with (for lack of a better term) the Brooklyn jazz scene. Their second duo album, ‘Searching for the Disappeared Hour,’ was a chance to mine the jazz canon for inspiration while finding ways to playfully disrupt each other’s style.”

  • All About Jazz
    by Jerome Wilson
    2021 BEST RECORDINGS

  • PopMatters
    by Will Layman
    2021 TOP JAZZ ALBUMS
    “The simpatico is now utter and a wonder. Both are players in the New Jazz world who value strong writing and how it connects to improvisation that is not defined or bounded by sets of chord changes.”

  • NPR
    by Nate Chinen
    2021 TOP 12

  • The Wire/Magnet
    by Bill Meyer
    2021 TOP 10 JAZZ AND
    IMPROV. RECORDINGS

  • All About Jazz
    by Jerome Wilson
    ★★★★★ ”Courvoisier and Halvorson have a chemistry that brings out something new in both of them. The sounds they make here are both familiar and alien at the same time. This is a totally involving and, in its own warped way, beautiful session of music.”

  • Free Press
    by Keith Black Winnipeg
    ★★★★ ½ “The synchronicity between these two move what is unapologetic experimental music into the realm of sheer musical beauty. They take turns heading to the musical edge, while the other holds the foundation. The result is always thoughtful, surprisingly accessible and perhaps unexpectedly melodic.”

  • New York City Jazz Record
    by Robert Iannapollo
    ”This is a duo whose members, while like-minded musically, are different enough to surprise and entertain both the listener and each other.”

  • Bandcamp
    by Dave Sumner
    “On piano, nobody quite sounds like Sylvie Courvoisier, nor, on guitar, like Mary Halvorson. Their individual voices are distinctive, which is why there’s all kinds of intrigue when they come together in a recording studio.”

  • thebluemoment.com
    by Richard Williams, 2023

CROP CIRCLES

  • Something Else
    by S. Victor Aaron
    ”    The duo released the album Crop Circles in 2017 via Relative Pitch Records. 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.” "The affinity heard between the two is something that can't be taught... This meeting of two of the brightest minds on the edgier side of jazz today produces music that’s astonishing both in its fluency and ceaseless ingenuity.”