Das SPECIAL JAM SESSION wird von SYLVIE COURVOISIER TRIO von 21:00 Uhr - 22:00 Uhr mit einem Konzert eröffnet.
Sylvie Courvoisier, p. (CH)
Drew Gress, b. (USA)
Kenny Wollesen, dr. (USA)
“Some pianists approach the instrument like it’s a cathedral – Sylvie Courvoisier sometimes treats it like a playground,” observes Kevin Whitehead aptly in the liner notes to D’Agala (Intakt), the latest album by the Sylvie Courvoisier Trio. “In two minutes, she covers more ground than some pianists get to in a set.” He goes on to compare the venturesome interaction of this trio with a pioneering jazz icon from the 1950s: “There is something Herbie Nichols-like about the Courvoisier-Gress-Wollesen trio’s feel: collective music-making as light-on-its-feet fun; a genuine trio music in which bass and drums are full partners with piano.” That striking cohesion and collective sense of play are what mark the Swiss pianist and her esteemed American rhythm mates as kindred spirits in the areas of color, groove and melody. The group’s European tour in April-May 2018 celebrates the January release of D’Agala. Courvoisier, who has been a fixture on the New York scene for nearly 20 years, released her first album with Gress and Wollesen in 2014, when Double Windsor (Tzadik) was named Album of the Year by both Slate and New York City Jazz Record, along with receiving the “CHOC” from Jazz Magazine and Jazzman in France. Beyond the trio, Courvoisier earned renown for balancing two distinct worlds – the richly detailed depth of her European chamber-music roots and the grooving, hook-laden sounds of the downtown New York jazz scene. Her long partnership with violinist Mark Feldman – acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic – has resulted in a seemingly telepathic duo, as well as a quartet. Courvoisier has worked with a who’s who in avant-jazz, including John Zorn, Wadada Leo Smith, Evan Parker, Ikue Mori, Ellery Eskelin, Susie Ibarra, Fred Frith and Mary Halvorson. — Bradley Bambarger
-Sylvie Courvoisier is a pianist , improviser and a composer. Born in Lausanne, Switzerland, Courvoisier moved to New York in 1998 and has lived in Brooklyn since that time. Courvoisier has led several groups over the years and has recorded over 25 records as aleader or co-leader for different labels, notably ECM, Tzadik and Intakt records and about 35 cds as a side person.
She has performed and recorded with John Zorn, Mark Feldman, Yusef Lateef, Ikue Mori, Tony Oxley, Tim Berne, Joey Baron, Joëlle Léandre, Herb Robertson, Butch Morris, Evan Parker, Mark Dresser, Ellery Eskelin, Lotte Anker, Fred Frith, Michel Godard, Tomazs Stanko among others.
Since 1996, she has been touring widely with her own groups and as a side person in USA, Canada, Japan, Australia and Europe. Currently, Courvoisier is the leader of her TRIO with Kenny Wollesen and Drew Gress. She performs regularly Solo and since 1997 in Duo with violinist Mark Feldman. She co-leads the Sylvie Courvoisier/Mark Feldman Quartet with Scott Colley and Billy Mintz.
She is a member of Mephista, an improvising Trio with Ikue Mori and Susie Ibarra and plays in different projects of John Zorn. She is also a sideperson of Erik Friedlander's Trio, Herb Robertson's Quintet and Nate Wooley's Quartet. Since 2010, she has been working as a pianist and composer with the project of the flamenco dancer Israel Galvan "la Curva ».
Her latest releases as a leader are «Double Windsor», her new trio with Kenny Wollesen and Drew Gress on Tzadik Records and as a co-leader: Sylvie Courvoisier Mark Feldman Quartet «Birdies for Lulu» with Billy Mintz and Scott Colley (2014) on Intakt Records and a duo album with Mark Feldman „Live at Theater Vidy-Lausanne” on Intakt (2013), and «Either Or And» a duo album with Evan Parker on Relative Pitch.
Awards include Switzerland's 1996 Prix des jeunes créateurs, Zonta Club's 2000 Prix de la Création, Switzerland's 2010 Grand Prix de la Fondation Vaudoise de la Culture and 2013’s NYFA (NewYork Foundation For the Art).
-Bassist/composer Drew Gress performs extensively with artists on the cutting edge of contemporary improvised music. He may not be the busiest bassist ever ("I don't think so, man. What about Ron Carter?”, the bassist comments wryly), but he's probably playing somewhere tonight.
His project 7 Black Butterflies (Premonition Records), featured 9 of Drew1s original compositions and was released in MAY 2005. This was the follow up to 2001's Spin and Drift, which received widespread critical acclaim and also featured Drew's pedal- steel guitar playing. He also leads the quartet Jagged Sky; their debut recording, Heyday (Soul Note) was released in 1998 and is now considered somewhat of an underground classic. Previously, he was a founding member of the cooperative quartet Joint Venture, producing three albums in the early 1990s for Enja: Joint Venture, Ways, and Mirrors.
Gress has been a member of Marc Copland's trios for over a decade, lending his stunning sense of accompaniment and prodigious soloistic technique to the pianist's recordings and concerts.
Drew can be heard on recordings of Ralph Alessi, Tim Berne, Uri Caine, Bill Carrothers, Gerald Cleaver, Ravi Coltrane, Fred Hersch, John Hollenbeck, Tony Malaby, and Mat Maneri.
He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Meet the Composer, and Chamber Music America.
-Drummer Kenny Wollesen performed on over 30 recordings during the 1990s and, as the decade progressed, gained increasing renown as a musician of astonishing versatility, skill, and ingenuity. He has recorded and toured with all kinds of musicians, from Tom Waits (Wolleson performs on Waits' 1993 collaboration with William S. Burroughs, Black Rider), to Sean Lennon, to Ron Sexsmith (Wollesen performs on his second album, Other Songs).
A founding member of the New Klezmer Trio, Wollesen is also all over N.Y.C.'s downtown jazz and avant-garde musicians' recordings, and has been so active as to tour with Bill Frisell and Myra Melford in the same month. — Joslyn Layne
Better than anybody before or since, Kenny Wollesen blended a modern percussionist's drive and eclecticism with an insider's respect for the nineteenth-century klezmer vocabulary. With Kenny on the sticks in 1987 and '88, The Klezmorim had the chops to achieve a funky 1910 street-band groove, and the confidence to fuse klezmer with rock and jazz.
Wollesen stands out as a drummer's drummer -- playing masterfully but loose, peppering the beat with a mulligatawney stew of musical ideas.
Eintritt/ Ticket : 12€
Ermässigt/Reduced: 8€
Beginn 21:00 Uhr( Einlass 20:00 Uhr)