Pianist Sylvie Courvoisier loves her instrument. When you’re a musician, having that kind of deep devotion means finding the right balance of healthy respect and even healthier irreverence – after all, you want to find every sound your ax can create, and then figure out how to use it. The Swiss-born/Brooklyn-based Courvoisier delights in that aspect – she smacks the keys as often as she caresses them, pounding the low end of her keyboard, tickling the high end, and just generally incorporating as much noise and cacophony as she can while still making sounds recognizable as music.
With her latest album Amalthea, Courvoisier collects a trio of like minds to join her explorations. Bassist Thomas Morgan, drummer Dan Weiss, and vibraphonist Patricia Brennan – herself no stranger to pushing the boundaries of her instrument – are clearly happy to leap into the pianist’s pool and engage in any manner of tomfoolery, as long as it’s tuneful. Check out “Queen of Spades,” a playful bit of postbop that rides the rhythm section’s steady pulse (except for when it stops on a dime) and lets the harmonic instruments duel like contesting fencers (except for when they wind together in harmony). “King of Hearts” immediately follows, unsurprisingly, leaning further into chaos as Brennan does her best to outshine her boss – not for ego’s sake, but in order to push them both into the outer realms. By the time we get to “At Risk” and “Circumbent,” Morgan and Weiss demand their own turn at the freebop wheel, the latter whipping the beat from funk to freak, and the former inserting throbs and solos into the intricate lattice constructed by Brennan and Courvoisier. The closing epic “Le Pavot Rouge” brings it all home, with the tension between order and chaos channeled into a surging tune that grips the ears even as it pours discordance into them.
There’s a lot of clamor on Amalthea, but it runs up against an equal amount of melody. Courvoisier doesn’t so much find a midpoint between improvisation and craft as take an eraser to the mere possibility of its existence, and her band stays right there inside her vision. That makes Amalthea not just an impressive feat, but a pure blast to hear.
