Patricia Brennan & Sylvie Courvoisier: TALAMANTI

The Jazz Gallery
1158 Broadway, 5th Fl.
New York, NY 10001

Sets at 7:30pm and 9:30pm

Sylvie Courvoisier –piano
Patricia Brennan –vibraphone

TALAMANTI is a project and a body of work for piano and mallet percussion. This project is inspired by the uniqueness of the instrumentation and the limitless sonic possibilities of the combination of both instruments. Mallet percussionist Patricia Brennan and the extraordinary pianist Sylvie Courvoisier explore and push the sonic boundaries that their respective instruments present. They develop a new collective improvisational language that expands on the legacy of this unusual instrument pairing within jazz and improvisational music. This duo made its debut with a premiere performance at Roulette in Brooklyn, NY on December 6, 2023. The recording of this project will take place in the Spring of 2024 with an expected release in 2025. “Mexican born vibraphonist/marimbist and improviser/composer Patricia Brennan ‘has been widely feted as one of the instrument’s newer leaders.’” –NYC Jazz Record Patricia Brennan‘s album “Maquishti” was #4 in The NY Times top 10 jazz albums of 2021. Patricia received the rising star vibraphonist award on Downbeat 2022 Critics Poll and #4 vibraphonist of the year on the 2023 Critics Poll. Her album “More Touch” was listed on NPR’s Best Music of 2022 and the opener track “Unquiet Respect” was listed on NPR’s 100 Best Songs of 2022.

Patricia is also an accomplished side person, working for artists such as Grammy winning Arturo O’Farrill’s Afro Latin Jazz Big Band and Mary Halvorson’s Amaryllis. Patricia is a Valley of Search, Pyroclastic, Audeze, and Bluehaus Mallets artist and is currently on the faculty for Jazz vibraphone at Manhattan School of Music, the New School and NYU Jazz. Pianist-composer Sylvie Courvoisier, a native of Switzerland, has earned just renown for balancing two distinct worlds: the deep, richly detailed chamber music of her European roots and the grooving, hook- laden sounds of the downtown jazz scene in New York City, her home for more than two decades. Few artists feel truly at ease in both concert halls and jazz clubs, playing improvised or composed music. But Courvoisier – “a pianist of equal parts audacity and poise,” according to The New York Times – is as compelling when performing Stravinsky’s iconic Rite of Spring in league with Klamenco dancer- choreographer Israel Galvá n and pianist Cory Smythe as she is when improvising with her own widely acclaimed jazz trio, featuring bassist Drew Gress and drummer Kenny Wollesen. Then there are her ear- opening collaborations with such avant-jazz luminaries as John Zorn, Wadada Leo Smith, Evan Parker, Ikue Mori, Ellery Eskelin, Susie Ibarra, Fred Frith, Andrew Cyrille, Mark Feldman, Ken Vandermark, Nate Wooley and Mary Halvorson. In music as in life, Courvoisier crosses borders with a creative spirit and a free mind; her music-making is as playful as it is intense, as steeped in tradition as it is questing and intrepid. JazzTimes has said: “Courvoisier keeps you on the edge of your seat because it feels like the piano cannot contain her. Her careening solos seem to overwhelm and over Klow the keyboard and keep spilling.”