Sylvie Courvoisier
Signs And Epigrams

LA RECENSIONE

Composer of Swiss origin, later relocated to New York where she currently resides, Sylvie Courvoisier has always made the research applied to the piano (or keyboards) her distinctive trademark, whether she has worked as a soloist (as in the present album), or when she has been joined or accompanied by other musicians, such as in the Mephista project (with Ikue Mori and Susie Ibarra) or in Abaton, with Mark Feldman and the supreme cellist Erik Friedlander.

In "Signs And Epigrams," Courvoisier engages in ten different explorations of the sound generated through the use of the piano with changing purposes; indeed, beyond an instrumental approach that tends to favor experimentation and improvisation, what changes are precisely the styles and genres investigated in the compositions. In contrast to tracks where a neoclassical, chamber music, or avant-garde reading prevails, and in general a "traditional" one, there are other pieces where the approach is more radical, and the sound textures venture to touch a certain form of industrial (obviously of pianistic lineage), but also daring much bolder solutions, such as when the instrument is manipulated, as she herself states, in order to reproduce what could be the sound of an orchestra materialized inside the piano.

Among changes in instrumental technique, structural iterations, tonal solutions, evolving dynamic scales, and an undeniable desire to push beyond, we reach the end of an album that seeks to combine listening and research, but not always succeeding fully in the endeavor.