Pianist Sylvie Courvoisier, who performs in Happening with her trio on Saturday 6 November, gave us a mini-interview straight from her festival trip to San Francisco.
What’s Happening?
I’m good thank you, in San Francisco right now, I just played last night at a super nice festival called “Other Minds”. I played in duo with Mary Halvorson, music from our new album Searching for the Disappeared Hour. We had really fun! Anthony Braxton played after us in duo with James Fei, it was a fantastic concert.
You performed at Tampere Jazz Happening in 2008 in connection with the album Alien Huddle, where the combination of piano, Lotte Anker’s saxophone and Ikue Mori’s electronics was not the most common one. This year the instrumentation is as close to classic as it can be: your jazz piano trio, which released its first album in 2014. How have these seven years been?
I was always a bit intimidated by the classical trio formation, now that I’m older and hopefully a bit more mature, I really like it! And I love playing with Drew Gress and Kenny Wollesen, they are magicians!
All of the compositions on D’Agala and Free Hoops are dedications, mainly to musicians you admire and your near ones. Are these dedications kind of afterthoughts – oh, this brings to my mind Ornette Coleman, John Zorn, or my brother – or is the person (or cat) in question almost like a starting point?
It was a starting point!
What motivates you to make music? Has music always been your first choice of self-expression, or just one of many?
Music has been always my first choice. I started when I was six years old, and I knew that was it!
What’s going to happen?
Enjoying the moment.
Sylvie Courvoisier Trio at Pakkahuone on Saturday, 6 November at 21.45. Tickets 55/45 € (incl. 3 concerts).
