Courvoisier - Free Hoops (CD)

Sylvie Courvoisier presents a new trio album at the height of her mastery and success. "Free Hoops" follows the widely celebrated trio album "D'Agala" which The New York Times counted as among the best records of the year. With every concert and every album this glorious trio's modus operandi becomes more clear - Sylvie Courvoisier, Drew Gress and Kenny Wollesen play morphing music by turns intricately detailed and ambiguously wide open. The music Courvoisier writes is rigorously organized and calls for ensemble precision, as a few thorny unisono heads demonstrate. But the music also harbors a misterioso, dreamlike quality that may surface at any time, induced by a wistful ostinato or moonlit piano arpeggio stubbornly repeated, or by a quiet episode that underscores the depth of the trio's sonic space. They also do that good stuff we prize jazz for - the happy swinging, the coming together when they make complex material sing, and the flying apart when the players explore it on their own.