Sylvie Courvoisier and Ned Rothenberg have a history of highly sympathetic improvisational collaborations going back over 20 years of live performance and exemplified by their trio album with Mark Feldman, In Cahoots, on the Clean Feed Label. Each extends the musical language of his/her instrument through a highly personal vocabulary allowing them to play roles outside the standard ones (single line melodies for horns, chordal accompaniment for piano) and create a dialogue which operates on many musical planes simultaneously and may imply a wide variety of idioms without settling firmly in any of them. Now, as people have had to isolate in this Covid-19 period they decided to be in each others ‘pod’ and work on a new program of music including new co-written composed and improvised materials, contributions from each of their catalogues and some of their favorite tunes by others. For selected European appearances, they will add the brilliant Swiss percussionist Julian Sartorius, offering new avenues to expand their musical ideas. For Sylvie, the collaboration with this highly charismatic player started in 2004, when Julian was her student In the Musikhochschule Luzern for a weekly workshop. She noticed right away how creative and talented Julian was already in his early twenties. A few years later, she hired him in different contexts: a few duo concerts and as a sub for Kenny Wollesen in her piano trio for 2 European tours in 2016 and 2018.
COVID lockdown is the perfect occasion to create and rehearse this new band, they did their first tour in October 2020, during the pandemic, and recorded in Bern in October 2020. Their first album « Lockdown » will be released in April 2021 on Clean Feed. (Pressetext)