By Ferruccio Martinotti
Last quarter of the year and the top seeded players enter the court: Sylvie
Courvoisier and Wadada Leo Smith together on Angel Falls, out for Intakt
Records. Should someone need to get acquainted with these two Aces, the
simple, right move to be done is to check the Free Jazz Blogs’s past pages where both
of them are hugely covered, especially Stef’s peerless reviews of Wadada,
making him the Supreme Cantor of the trumpeter. For what is worth, our cups
of tea are America along with the late Jack DeJohnette and Sacred Ceremonies with Milford Graves and Bill Laswell but get what you prefer,
even by chance, and after a couple of notes it will be perfectly clear for
you that the trumpet of our 84 years old hero is a prism refracting the
sound, opening sonic worlds or better to say, sonic galaxies. Madame
Courvoisier, Swiss born and New York based, for the sake of our sheer,
infinite pleasure, delivered in the last years a body of astonishing music,
showing to old and new listeners her palette of piano ammunitions, be alone
(To be other-wise), with her trio (Free Hoops), with Mary Halvorson
(Bone Bells) or in a larger ensemble such as Chimaera, an absolute 2024
masterpiece that sees Sylvie teaming up with Wadada, Nate Wooley, Christian
Fennesz, Drew Gress and Kenny Wollesen.
The pianist and the trumpeter first
played together in 2017 at a concert organized by John Zorn and as
Courvoisier recalls: “Right after he asked me for my number and a couple of
months later we did a recording in New Haven, in trio with Marcus Gilmore”.
The outcome of that session has yet to see the light of the day but there
have been regular collaborations since, including further trios with
drummers Kenny Wollesen and Nasheet Waits, a Smith ensemble with two pianos.
Given the love of Wadada for duos with piano (see the works with Vijay Iyer,
John Tilbury, Angelica Sanchez, Aruan Ortiz and Amina Claudine Myers), and
his admiration for Sylvie (“Whenever I’ve played on stage with her, it’s
always been a journey that has been mutual and creative. She’s got courage
and you can see it when she’s at the piano, when she is inspired to go
toward something, she doesn’t just go near it, she advances as if she’s
going there to save creation”, from the liner notes) it wasn’t a matter of
“If” but of “When” the two would have entered a studio together. This
happened in October 2024 at Octaven Audio, Mount Vernon, NY for an output of
8 magnificent compositions that sound as the perfect epitome of such top
notch musicians. Wadada spacious notes don’t hide their blues roots, while
Sylvie combined upbringing of classical and jazz studies allows her to draw
sonic textures that are a real, unmatched trademark; together they’re
building a shadowplay of sounds, designing perfectly balanced geometries
around and dissolving them into the fire soon after.
As per the creation
process of the album, let’s listen to what Courvoisier says in the liner
notes: “We just played right through exactly the order of the CD and exactly
the amount of music on the CD, with no edits. We probably did that in two
hours and after we mixed it. The same day we recorded and mixed. We started
at noon and at 5 pm it’s finished”. Are you thinking about a labour of
genius? We are, too. It’s absolutely interesting to read Smith in the liner
notes about the composition process: “In composing, you got the inspiration
that comes to you as you construct the page. That inspiration comes
throughout the process, even if it takes 5 years or 27 or 37 years to
complete it. It comes off and on throughout that process. In a performance
the same thing happens. The difference is that in performance you’re
allowing those moments of inspiration to come directly through”. This record
delivers all that and more and we let Sylvie conclude about the chemistry
they’ve been able to create together: “With Wadada I feel we’re creating in
the moment and I feel something very joyful. We’re like kids discovering
things. I feel I can hear harmonically where he wants to go. Basically, I
try to erase myself and try to make him sound great”. And there is still
someone wondering why this music is floating in our bloodcells…