Mark Feldman/Sylvie Courvoisier

photo credit: Cifarelli

 

Thursday OCT 25, 8PM

Bezanson Recital Hall

General Admission: $10/$5 students

“Calling these duets simply chamber music, would be selling them short,” writes Andrew Bartlett. “The music gallops through genres, all of which is touched uniquely by Feldman and Courvoisier's mix of sharp jazz chops, 20th-century chamber music, and traditional music of multiple stripes.”

Found on over 150 recordings, violinist Mark Feldman has worked with everybody from Johnny Cash and John Zorn, to the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra. He has performed and recorded with Kenny Wheeler, Paul Bley, Billy Hart, Lee Konitz, Joe Lovano, Anthony Davis, Dave Douglas, Muhal Richard Abrams, Tim Berne, Mark Dresser and Uri Caine among others.

Before moving to New York City in 1986, Mr. Feldman lived in Nashville Tennessee where he toured with country western singers Loretta Lynn and Ray Price. In Nashville he appeared on recordings by Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, George Jones, Jerry Lee Lewis and TV evangelist Jimmy Swaggart. Composer John Zorn has included Feldman in many concert and recording projects, and he has been commissioned to write for and perform with the Kronos Quartet and the WDR Radio Orchestra. He has appeared on record with Cheryl Crow, The Manhattan Transfer, Diana Ross and Carol King.

His wife, pianist and composer Sylvie Courvoisier, has recorded for ECM ,Tzadik and Intakt records, and has worked with Yusef Lateef, Joëlle Léandre, Herb Robertson, Butch Morris, Ellery Eskelin, Tony Oxley, and Tim Berne, among others. She was awarded Switzerland's Grand Prix de la Fondation Vaudoise de la Culture in 2010. With Ikue Mori and Susie Ibarra she is a member of the trio Mephista, and co-leads a quartet with Feldman that includes Thomas Morgan and Gerry Hemmingway.

“That her music is as aesthetically beautiful as it is strange and mysterious is only further testament to her prowess as a composer,” writes Thom Jurek about her 2004 release, Abaton (ECM), featuring Feldman and Erik Friedlander. “That this trio plays her music as if it has been creating it from the air is nothing short of remarkable. Abaton is Courvoisier’s crowning achievement thus far, and this group points her firmly forward in a direction where everything is still possible, demonstrating that there is something new under the sun in classical music and improvisation.”