Mary Halvorson: Canis Major

Mary Halvorson is the most distinct jazz guitarist and composer of her generation. “She is a strong and inspiring bandleader, a brilliant soloist with a unique, often quirky approach, and a beautiful guitar tone that reaches back to tradition,” as John Zorn told The New York Times. That was 2016, when Halvorson—a childhood violinist who followed the ecstasy of discovering Jimi Hendrix’s music in middle school to pursue jazz at Wesleyan University—was only a few albums into her career, before she’d released the epochal Code Girl or joined Thumbscrew or cut duo albums with Bill Frisell and John Dieterich and Sylvie Courvoisier or formed any of her remarkable quartets, quintets, and sextets. Wielding an archtop hollow body guitar routed through a simple delay pedal, Halvorson’s playing is liminal, flirting with the divide between past and present, between acoustic and electric. It is a singular voice in jazz.

Halvorson has long toyed with levels of density, adding players to expand the harmonic reach of her music. When she wanted more sound, for instance, for 2025’s rapturous About Ghosts, she incorporated saxophonists in her band, Amaryllis, rather than starting something new. But Canis Major, a quartet alongside longtime Halvorson drummer Tomas Fujiwara, is both new and newly direct, Halvorson’s cutting tone pulling the quartet like a horse led by its rider. Bassist Henry Fraser has made powerful solo records and worked with the likes of Weasel Walter and Jason Nazary, while trumpeter Dave Adewumi starts with a purring tone and pulls it apart until it seems to bleed colors. Big Ears is honored to be an early host of Halvorson’s latest adventure.