By Gregg Miller
A dexterous and imaginative exploration of and use of the piano’s range of
timbres: chamber-avant, solo piano, we get jagged slabs, fingers of
concrete, pathos; speed repetition on prepared piano, tinny metal comb
hits; urgent marimba-esque woody buzz; pure, lush piano; spare and
ineffable; joyful. Courvoisier’s playing is assertive, direct. No blur,
all in your face, even the delicacy. A complete master, Courvoisier can
play with style, passion and anything she wants. At this point, it’s a
matter of design and surprise.
Courvoisier’s previous record on Intakt, Chimaera (2023), with Wadada Leo Smith, Nate Wooley, Drew Gress, Kenny Wollesen, and
Christian Fennesz, is magnificent. This solo piano recording (the second
of her long career) is a gift of more and continued transcendence, though
with a very different feel, or set of feels. Here each tune is a like a
private miniature, each dedicated to a different person (and one to her
cats). There are exquisite moments, tunes I will return to and add to my
forever compilation playlist, delicate, daring, every note and pause vital
to the overall effect. Others are more about rigor or patterns, academic
even. You may prefer those. I may even prefer them in a few years. What I
loved on this round of listening was the inventiveness of the prepared
piano interspersed with the unaltered sounds. It deeply humanized the
tone, turned the hammered strings into a personal voice, both lyrical and
rhythmic.
Is the record title a reference to Levinas’s Otherwise than Being? To already be open to the other’s otherness—a normative standard much
in need these days of renewed nativism. It is a fond sentiment
undergirding free music, although that’s trickier to pull off on a solo
recording.
The opening number is beautiful and mysterious, then broiling rage leveled
to a simmering, low piano keys striking mute against determined plucking.
Cinematic. The second track (“Hotel Esmeralda (for Hugo Pratt)”) offers an
immediate contrast: unadorned piano, spacious, relaxed, a gentle offering,
just a little bluesy, contemplative, like the morning after, running into
heavy weather. The title track, “To Be Otherwise (for Amy Sillman),” feels
studied, a modern composition, Parisian (or Swiss) in America. I don’t
love this tune, though I quite like certain moves it makes, and I can
understand its appeal and its potentially upsetting nature if one were
deeply embedded in the classical context. Is it the kind of thing Alex
Ross might like? Best title and a highlight on the record goes to “Edging
Candytuft” (dedicated to Mary Halvorson), a lovely phrase for patient,
oral sex. Though Halvorson’s playing has yet to find a place in my heart,
Courvousier’s prepared piano bang-splats and smushed key motifs is
intriguing and compelling. “Frisking (for Henry Cowell) is wonderful for
similar reasons.
If you are looking for more of Courvoisier’s interplay rather than solo
material, beyond her recent, excellent Chimaera, check out, for example, “Obvious Obtuse” on As Soon as Possible (Cam Jazz, 2008), for her rapport with Ellery Eskelin, or on the same
record, the interaction with Eskelin and bassist Vincent Courtois on
“Mesure d’ailleurs.” Her support of their playing enables them to really spread out, to be
gorgeous, fluid, inventive, and confident in the pauses and re-starts.
Similarly, on the harder edged, pulsing “Taktlos 3” on her trio record Passagio (Intakt, 2002) with Susie Ibarra and Joëlle Léandre, all three are
muscular, direct yet musical and mutually supportive. I admire their
collaboration and its mysterious synergies, the delight that is evident in
the surprise of what transpires. Courvoisier’s inside-the-piano work is so
perfectly evocative against the energy of Ibarra and Léandre.