Sylvie Courvoisier Trio
“Some pianists approach the instrument like it’s a cathedral,” NPR once wrote. “Sylvie Courvoisier treats it like a playground.” That has been the lifelong predilection for Courvoisier, the Swiss-raised pianist who has made New York the source of her creative life for three decades. As a kid in Lausanne, she would sneak into her parents’ piano room and find the instrument’s key, since the lid was locked to curb her enthusiasm. She would improvise to whatever was on the radio, whether it was pop songs or traffic announcements, digging in the piano’s innards to find sounds that surprised her. Courvoisier went to conservatory and got her degree, but she was always pushing for sounds beyond classical bounds. After moving to New York in 1998, she rapidly found them, becoming an invigorating jazz composer and improviser with deep harmonic and structural roots in the classical world. From her incredible duo with Mary Halvorson to her bands with Nate Wooley, from her duo with Evan Parker to assorted projects with early mentor Ikue Mori, Courvoisier engages the piano as an open avenue for musical exploration.
One of Courvoisier’s longest-running and most electrifying projects has been her Trio, with drummer Kenny Wollesen and bassist Drew Gress. Wollesen is, of course, a New York cornerstone—an enthusiastic collaborator to John Zorn, a member of Sexmob, a bandleader himself. Gress, likewise, has a vast and deep résumé, from his work with Tim Berne and John Abercrombie to an ongoing and multi-decade collaboration with Fred Hersch. On 2026’s incredible Éclats—Live in Europe, the trio distills three lauded albums into a powerful 70-minute set for Intakt Records. “Free Hoops” is all agility and energy, the three members zigging and zagging in bursts of power. “Imprint Double” is impressionistic and open until the trio begins to boogie like a rock band, only to stop and veer off into another unexpected direction. The Sylvie Courvoisier Trio is one of the most powerful and commanding bands in—and beyond—jazz right now, indeed treating music as a personal playground.
