Courvoisier / Halvorson // Apparitions // Takase / von Schlippenbach

This concert evening is all about collaboration: guitarist Mary Halvorson presents her collaboration with pianist Sylvie Courvoisier, followed by a German-French collaboration project in which 30 young singers from Berlin share the stage with three avant-garde ensembles from Paris. The concert will be brought to a brilliant close by two jazz greats: Aki Takase and Alexander von Schlippenbach playing piano four-hands.



18:00

Courvoisier / Halvorson

(CH, US)

Like so many collaborations in jazz, the duo of pianist Sylvie Courvoisier and guitarist Mary Halvorson emerges from improvising together. Given the special connection they both felt from the beginning, their first visit to the recording studio together was not long in coming: in 2017 they deepened their intuitive interplay while recording their album "Crop Circles" (2017), adding compositions they had written for other projects. This was followed by the album "Searching for the Disappeared" (2021), featuring music Courvoisier and Halvorson had composed specifically for their duo. With it, they elevated their energetic musical interaction that had characterized their earlier work to a new level, weaving melodic lines into harmonies that move through complex webs of sound.

Swiss-born Courvoisier has been a fixture on the New York jazz scene for decades. Like Halvorson, a MacArthur Foundation fellow and one of the most distinguished guitarists of her generation, she currently seems to be at the peak of her creative powers. Together, the two act almost somnambulistically as they respond to each other's spontaneous inspirations and create fascinating worlds of sound - whether they turn to composed material or free improvisation. The two of them let the most diverse references flow in as naturally and casually as if they had grown organically. There is tension and dissonance in their music - for example, when the classically influenced grounding of Courvoisier's playing meets the rocking conciseness of Halvorson's guitar. And even if their duets sometimes seem ambiguous and unruly: the remarkable bond between them can always be heard.



Line-up

Sylvie Courvoisier - piano

Mary Halvorson - guitar



19:30

"Apparitions"

(FR, DE, IT)

At this year's Jazzfest Berlin, the French quartet Novembre will present a project that is as unusual as it is exciting: involving young singing voices between the ages of nine and twelve from two renowned Berlin children's choirs, the ensemble will realize a unique version of its "Apparitions" program, while lighting effects and choreography will set the stage. The band will be joined by a cello trio and a second jazz combo called Bribes to reinterpret their album "Encore". Thanks to the close collaboration of composers Antonin Tri-Hoang and Romain Clerc-Renaud with Berlin choir directors Gudrun Luise Gierszal and Eva Spaeth, as well as two intensive rehearsal phases in Berlin, the children and young people of the Girls' Choir of the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin and the State and Cathedral Choir of the Berlin University of the Arts are an integral part of the performance and actively intervene in the musical events with vocals and percussive elements.

Ten years lie between Novembre's 2013 debut album and its successor "Encore," but the long wait has been worth it. "Encore" delivers erratic, yet at the same time surprisingly logical transitions between Lennie Tristano-style bebop passages and free jazz. The band's repertoire comes in equal parts from the pens of saxophonist Antonin Tri-Hoang and pianist Romain Clerc-Renaud, who are also always on the same wavelength in the playful implementation of their compositions and deliver the sometimes difficult runs in perfect unison. With the restlessness of the transitions between the individual episodes in "Miniatures", one could sometimes think that a child is operating a CD changer; however, this is a virtuoso live combo that abruptly stops again and again, only to resume a short time later where it left off a few sequences earlier. The amazing thing is that even in the wildest jumps and breaks they still manage to make the different elements harmonize with each other.

The band is completed by bassist Thibault Cellier and - especially for the concert at Jazzfest Berlin - by drummer Sylvain Darrifourcq. Together, the musicians move through highly focused, meticulously crafted arrangements, jumping back and forth between composed material and free improvisation with a mixture of precision and effervescent joy of playing.

Line-up

Novembre

Romain Clerc-Renaud - piano, composition, keyboard instruments

Antonin-Tri Hoang - saxophone, composition

Thibault Cellier - double bass

Sylvain Darrifourcq - drums

Bribes

Linda Olah - vocals

Geoffroy Gesser - saxophone

Francesco Pastacaldi - percussion

Gulrim Choi - cello

Adèle Viret - cello

Myrtille Hetzel - cello

Girls' Choir of the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin

Kapellknaben of the Staats- und Domchor Berlin

Gudrun Luise Gierszal, Eva Spaeth - conductors

Sitali Dewan - assistance

Arrangement and collaboration / workshop with the Berlin children's choirs on the initiative of Berliner Festspiele / Jazzfest Berlin in cooperation with Berlin University of the Arts



21:00

Takase / von Schlippenbach: "Four Hands Piano Pieces"

(JP, DE)

Pianist Aki Takase and pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach are veterans of the Berlin jazz scene. As partners on the piano and in life - after all, the two are also a couple in private life - their decades of experience in making music, together as well as in their own respective projects, is not only felt when they play on stage. Their recordings together since the early 1990s - whether as a duo or with a band, as in their tribute to Eric Dolphy - are marked by the combination of Takase's more tradition-based playing style and her husband's stormy, new-music-inspired improvisations. Earlier this year, the two released perhaps their strongest album yet, "Four Hands Piano Pieces," which captures them playing piano four-handed on the same instrument. In the liner notes, Schlippenbach explains that it was helpful to settle on an approximate concept in advance - such as the intervallic leaps that drive the movement of the motif of "Jumping Jack," the titular jumping jack, the focused back-and-forth in "Dialogue," or the notion of a grotesque dance number translated into sound in "N. Dance." But you don't really need such background information to be enchanted by their skill as they powerfully balance sonic spaces in real time. With the precision of a watchmaker, they develop jagged melody lines, even when it is still unclear where the musical journey is headed. By now, the two have been making music together for over four decades. What an enormous gain this is, becomes apparent at the latest when the two of them perform together. Then their almost telepathic abilities shine through, enabling them to carry the other's idea to its conclusion - or to already be where the other is heading.



Line-up

Aki Takase - piano

Alexander von Schlippenbach - piano