Courvoisier/Anker/Mori: Alien Huddle

Anker, Lotte, Courvoisier, Sylvie, Mori, Ikue

INT 144

Of the three, Anker has the deepest background in jazz; after studies at Copenhagen University Rhytmic Conservatory, where she came in contact with composers and saxophonists as diverse as Bob Brookmeyer and David Murray, she came up in the Scandinavian jazz scene during the late 1980s, initially playing in ensembles led by Marilyn Mazur, Pierre Dørge and others. She soon assumed leadership roles in several ensembles, a trio with Craig Taborn and Gerald Cleaver, and the 12-piece Copenhagen Art Ensemble. The later is particularly pertinent, as the CAE’s collaborations with Tim Berne provide insight into Berne’s influence on Anker.

Steeped in post-serial composition and non-idiomatic improvisation, Courvoisier’s music has a more glancing relationship to the jazz tradition. Although she is cogent in open loose settings like Herb Robertson’s NY Downtown Allstars, her own projects such as Abaton and Lonelyville emphasize a compositional formalism and improvisational rigor as commonly associated with the frontiers of classical music as it is with the jazz circuit. This is even the case when the terms of improvising are as wide-open as with Mephista, Courvoisier’s collaboration with Mori and Susie Ibarra.

CD x 1

Intakt Records

9/1/08

7640120191443