Sylvie Courvoisier and Cory Smythe's "The Rite of Spring - Spectre d'un songe"

Reading an interview on the Bandcamp site -- which has been featuring some good writing of late -- with the estimable pianist-composer-educator Kris Davis reminded me of this recent release on her Pyroclastic label. As a musician, Davis is equally conversant in notated music and improvisation, and her label champions others who are similarly inclined, including her fellow pianists Sylvie Courvoisier and Cory Smythe. 

The Swiss-born Courvoisier has been a fixture on the NYC jazz scene for a couple of decades; I quite enjoyed her pandemic-inspired collaboration with guitarist Mary Halvorson, Searching for the Disappeared Hour. Courvoisier had the idea of interpreting Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring while performing with dancer-choreographer Israel Galvan. At one point in his La Curva, the dancer struck a pose that reminded Courvoisier of Vaslav Nijinsky, choreographer of the 1913 ballet of The Rite that caused a sensation with its Paris premiere. 

Courvoisier abandoned a planned solo arrangement of the piece when the Stravinsky estate would only allow piano performances of the composer's version for two pianos; saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock suggested Smythe as a collaborator for the project. Smythe has worked with composers Tyshawn Sorey and Anthony Braxton, and violinist Hilary Hahn, among others. His three Pyroclastic albums (the latest: last year's Smoke Gets In Your Eyes) are fascinating, oblique extrapolations from song forms.

The two pianists render a scintillating reading of Stravinsky's score, exploring the contours of the familiar themes and giving them a rhythmic thrust that's new and distinctive. "Spectre d'un songe," the piece Courvoisier composed in response to The Rite, is episodic and dynamically varied. While it's hard to pick out the specific bits of Stravinsky she's responding to, Courvoisier and Smythe intertwine their sounds and run the gamut of moods from ruminative to tumultuous -- two piano adepts from different places on the composing-improvising continuum, rediscovering and engaging with a masterpiece that's part of their shared inheritance.