The vibraphonist Patricia Brennan says that she first heard Sylvie Courvoisier play ‘long before I ever imagined we might share a bandstand. What struck me immediately was that she approached the piano not simply as a harmonic instrument, but as an entire physical world’.
Courvoisier’s piano playing certainly refutes the adage, but when it comes to physical proximity the contemporary or avant-garde jazz scene might sometimes seem like a small world after all. The two musicians are both based in Brooklyn and had shared collaborators – most notably the guitarist Mary Halvorson – when Brennan joined Courvoisier’s newest ensemble a couple of years ago.
Billed as a ‘Sylvie Courvoisier 4’ the pianist was joined by Brennan on vibes, Thomas Morgan on the double bass and Dan Weiss on drums for a performance at the Jazz Gallery in New York City in March of 2023. The quartet would tour the following year as Poppy Seeds before changing their name to Amalthea but in the meantime Courvoisier and Brennan had stripped out the rhythm section and embarked on work as a duo.
In December of 2023 they premiered their Talamanti project at Roulette Intermedium and followed that up with a date at the Jazz Gallery in late May before heading into the studio a few days later to set down this album. Brennan’s successor to the critically acclaimed Breaking Stretch then took precedence, as she devised a large ensemble and drew from a slew of classical and alternative rock influences plus the constellations surrounding the Summer Triangle asterism to conceive Of The Near and Far, which was recorded in December and released in October of last year.
Among other points of interest Of The Near and Far set the controlled, even furtive drama of Courvoisier’s keys alongside Brennan’s limpid and cascading melodicism. Now a couple of years after its recording we finally get to hear Talamanti which plays out as a series of deftly balanced, carefully considered sketches both long and short with a focus on timbre and mood. It is a spirited but sombre record where galloping crescendos and impish spurts of emotion cohere into a steady and even somewhat reticent whole. Brennan notes:
Piano and vibraphone share a similar physical gesture: something strikes something else, and the sound blooms outward. But they live in very different worlds of vibration. The piano can feel architectural: dense, grounded, capable of exerting enormous weight. The vibraphone tends to float, its tones suspended in air, diaphanous. When we play together, we’re exploring the space between those two qualities: gravity and suspension.
Talamanti comes from the Nahuatl word tlamantli which according to Brennan’s definition ‘can describe things that resemble one another while still remaining distinct’. And at times the musicians here can sound like they are finishing each other’s sentences, overtly so in the opening moments of ‘Disparate Chase’ where a drip, drip on the vibes drops through a plunking piano key and splashes into the sink or bowl. Through piano preparations Courvoisier evokes gongs, the wiry plucks of a double bass and dominos falling in a row before the vibraphone lightly crests her dashing runs.
Then the duo begin to scamper around the room, the piano chasing or encircling the vibes as befits the song title. There is always something brusquely comic about Courvoisier’s playing, which seems to come replete with its own sound effects and chase sequences in the manner of a Tom and Jerry cartoon or household squabble between Sylvester the cat and Tweety the bird. Vibraphone glissandos ring out as the piano like an animatronic bassist seems to get stuck in accompaniment, with the duo swapping roles and continuing to jockey back and forth as ‘Disparate Chase’ draws to a close.
Twinkling metal bars and their overtones ring out to produce a gaseous haze on ‘The Time We Spent’ as the piano also sounds drenched in overtones but more plangent. This is a tender affair that seems inclined to nostalgia as the music and title evoke everything from Casablanca and its iconic theme ‘As Time Goes By’ to the ambient project Romance which trades in vaporous paeans to Celine Dion hits and old Hollywood glamour.
In fact those overtones are like smoke rings, puffed out and hovering in the haze of the near distance while the microphone placement picks up every ambient sound, including bodily movements and the slight shunting of a chair. Courvoisier repeatedly initiates a nostalgic melody while Brennan plays twinkling accoutrements, little beads or globules of limpid light like flickering moments still alive to the present. Yet towards the end of the piece shrill notes – first from the keys then from the vibes – shatter the illusion somewhat before a suspended close, as the duo get lost in the fraught endeavour of trying to recapture something.
‘Corto’ – one of two compositions attributed to Courvoisier on Talamanti – continues the entanglement at first in a more muted register. It sounds limpid and watery, those struck resonances more of wood than of metal before the piece turns into a face-off as the musicians engage in blustery or watery contest.
‘Perdidos en el Lamento’ opens on a long fraying chord that sounds dampened or palm-muted and dings out like a quieted church bell. A lament, the piece also suggests a clock meting out the time and is much in the atmosphere of shadowy corners and dusty remnants. The playing remains pensive as a few wafting overtones and short, scampering runs cast a spell in the second half of the composition. Then over the last ninety seconds Courvoisier seems to try to form a Latinate figure, with some success even though it gets caught in a cycle while Brennan in particular plays a game of upstairs, downstairs through the scales and glisses of her vibraphone.
Staying in that contemplative zone, ‘Trece Cielos’ refers to the thirteen heavens of Aztec mythology as the piano impresses some decision or denouement. Which is to say that if the piece ascends it remains all headspace rather than firmament, as the pressure builds like an incipient migraine or headache.
‘Hojas de Malabar’ commences on a note of more restrained chromaticism. The title refers to malabar spinach but here amid wafting overtones from the vibes, the plunging strings of Courvoisier’s piano sound like vines snapping or unravelling and falling down a bank or levee. Otherwise the duo navigate the piece tentatively before moving in the direction of a vamp, reaching a crescendo of sorts as the pooling nature of the tune with its chiming vibes and pacing keys becomes ever more insistent.
That dynamism towards the close is typical of Talamanti. And if ‘Perdidos en el Lamento’ bears a trace of ‘Antlia’ from Of The Near and Far through its sustained tones and dinged or scraped textures, ‘Hojas de Malabar’ contains some of the spectrality of About Ghosts where Mary Halvorson’s settled Amaryllis sextet – which includes Brennan on vibes – was bolstered by the alto and tenor saxophones of Immanuel Wilkins and Brian Settles.
From perhaps the hazy nostalgia of ‘The Time We Spent’ or certainly the residue of ‘Perdidos en el Lamento’ the atmosphere on Talamanti has been quite vaporous or ponderous and despite the odd surge the mood has been wary or portentous or even sometimes leaden. ‘Knots and Dander’ the second Courvoisier composition is very much of a piece with a few more percussive textures in the dying throes and latter stages.
‘Coma Berenices’ is subtly different. The title refers to the faint asterism in the northern sky which is named after Queen Berenice II of Egypt, who famously gave her hair as a votive offering in the hope of securing her husband Ptolemy III’s safe return from battle during the Third Syrian War.
To my mind the piece evokes the piano phrasing of Angelo Badalamenti, as it seems to be asking an emotional question or building a tension which is ready to crest and break. Yet those pensive and involved passages are interspersed with dreamier sentiments, airy spaces and moments of percussive rupture like one which sounds like the cutlery rattling or coffee cups shaking after somebody has slammed their hand down on a kitchen table or bench.
For all that ‘Coma Berenices’ remains quite tender and becomes whispering and vetivery. If we are gazing up at an asterism or constellation then it is through wooded trees at those stars. And once again it almost descends or speeds up into a chase sequence, perhaps in the wake of a meteor or comet with this chase especially pronounced by way of some hard drilling footsteps. The quizzical motif which recurs throughout ‘Coma Berenices’ is not dissimilar to the seven-note motif on Promises the crossover ambient jazz album by Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra.
Then the punning closer ‘EQ Distant’ begins with a low drone and a few limpid vibes. An almost subterranean roar seems to emanate from the mouth of that drone, shaking the foundations more than cleaving the skies. The chimes of the vibraphone though do glint and bead or fall like water droplets while the piano conjures monster movie theatrics through its skulking plod and tread, with Brennan and Courvoisier wresting with the tumult and wrangling their instruments to cohere together in the darkness.
