Mary Halvorson

[7/4]

February 9, 2008

Abstruse Sounds

Governed by Balance and Contrast

By BEN RATLIFF, NY Times

The young guitarist Mary

Halvorson orients herself around jazz, yet stands about two steps

removed from it. With her hollow-body electric guitar, broadcasting its

natural tone through an amp at low levels, she seems all set to play

standards; no doubt she can and does. But in her own tossing, prickly

trio she seems more like a folk musician who has spent months in

isolation, building strange chord clusters and then soldering them

together.

She makes determinedly staccato music, poking and prodding at you,

not naturally melodic. Sometimes it feels willful in its smartness, as

if she’s suspicious of song. But there’s something else there too,

something undogmatic and generous. She has figured out some compromise,

some positive tension, within herself and within her band.

At the Tea Lounge in Brooklyn on Thursday night she sat down to the

left of her bassist, John Hebert, and her drummer, Ches Smith. They all

played from sheet music, and Ms. Halvorson barely looked away from

hers, glancing down only once in a while at her volume and delay

pedals, which she used with dry restraint.

As a composer, Ms. Halvorson has just enough of a sense of concise,

melodic curves and harmonic motion to make her compositions work.

“Compositions” is the right word: they are notated at length, even

three-minute pieces, with pockets for improvising.

Sometimes the improvising functions in unlikely ways. In one piece

Mr. Hebert started a bass solo, got into it, and then whup: it was

over. Was it written that way? We’ll have to wait until the band’s

first record comes out later this year.

And as a guitarist, Ms. Halvorson has a candid, brambly energy. She

has an obsession with writing and improvising through large intervals,

which seems like her debt to the saxophonist Eric Dolphy.

Mr. Smith’s style was similarly unsentimental and unslick, but loud

and impatient, rushing ahead and exaggerating and tapering off

abruptly; some of that seems like his debt to Greg Saunier, the drummer

in the rock band Deerhoof.

Between them was Mr. Hebert, whose role was the moderating, guiding

voice of the jazz tradition. He played broad, resonant notes, with more

of a sense of swing. It took only a few seconds to see the good sense

in the band: no matter how abstruse the music can get, it rested on a

strong, simple principle of balance and contrast.

[jlhoots]

Interesting.

She's played quite a bit with Braxton.

[Guest Bill Barton]

Thanks for posting this. She's a relatively new name to me and definitely high on the "must hear" list, in part thanks to another thread on one of those other-jazz-bulletin-boards-that-shall-remain-nameless.

In particular, I'm looking forward to hearing the group Crackleknob with Nate Wooley and Reuben Radding.

Edited February 9, 2008 by Bill Barton

[Larry Kart]

Some real gobbly-dee-gook from Ratliff here:

"...in her own tossing, prickly trio..."

"tossing"?

"Mr. Smith’s style was similarly unsentimental..."

Smith, the drummer, is "unsentimental"? What would a sentimental drummer sound like?

Please pass the word soup.

[7/4]

Some real gobbly-dee-gook from Ratliff here:

"Mr. Smith's style was similarly unsentimental..."

Smith, the drummer, is "unsentimental"? What would a sentimental drummer sound like?

No brushes, perhaps?

[jlhoots]

Well - screw Ratliff since everybody here hates him.

Mary Halvorson is an interesting player.

[Larry Kart]

Mary Halvorson is an interesting player.

Given only who she's played with and is playing with, I'm sure she is.

[7/4]

http://www.maryhalvorson.com She sure looks busy. Her discography looks pretty healthy, four albums with Anthony Braxton. There was an article by Elliott Sharp in a recent issue of Guitar Player:

Mary Halvorson

By

Elliott Sharp

|

November, 2007

GP

The look: Blond head with cool

nerdy glasses staring into the void over a big Guild Artist Award

guitar. The sound: Bright, jagged, unpredictable. Flurries of notes mix

it up with pungent chords not found in any Ted Greene book, played with

an aggressive tone and sharp attack—sometimes subtly distorted and

bent, sometimes clean and acoustic. Whether playing in her phenomenal

duo with violist Jessica Pavone, fronting the Mary Halvorson Trio with

bassist John Hebert and drummer Ches Smith, avant-barnstorming in

legendary saxophonist Anthony Braxton's trio, or hitting the

alternarock scene in her duo People with drummer Kevin Shea, Mary

Halvorson orchestrates with her guitar, using counterpoint, textures,

and lines with nary a cliché to be found.

The pairing with Pavone reveals the primal Mary Halvorson. Thorny

compositions that sound as if female teen punkers the Shaggs received

doctorates in the music of 12-tone composer Alban Berg, and then

rewrote their

Philosophy of the World

. Halvorson and Pavone

teamed up in 2002, and, with little discussion, began making songs—each

bringing pieces separately to the duo. Carefully notated structures and

interplay morph effort- lessly into free improvisation that is

intelligent and expressive, but never self-indulgent. Also featuring

intense lyrics sung with their clear and melodic voices, the two women

make transcendent chamber music outside of any genre.

"I started playing guitar in the eighth grade when I became obsessed

with Jimi Hendrix, and my first guitar was a black-and-white

Stratocaster," says Halvorson. "Before that, I played classical

violin—which I really hated—and alto sax as a second instrument, but

that didn't last very long, either."

Growing up in Boston, Halvorson pursued an education in jazz at the

New England Conservatory, and at Berklee College of Music while still

in high school.

"I studied jazz guitar because my first teacher was a jazz guy," she

says. "Then, I went to Wesleyan University, and majored in music,

studying jazz, world music, experimental music, and all sorts of other

things. I also went to the New School for a year to study jazz

technique, as well as studying briefly with guitarist Joe Morris, who

was a pretty influential teacher. He taught me a lot about developing

my sound and the importance of individuality. Other influences include

Lenny Breau, Derek Bailey, and Sonny Sharrock, though some of my

greatest influences have been horn players like Ornette Coleman and

Eric Dolphy. I started listening to rock music late, because of my

focus on jazz, but now I listen to it a lot. One of my favorite bands

is Deerhoof, and their guitarist John Dietrich, but I also really like

Mick Barr of Orthrelm and Ocrilim."

Halvorson's equipment setup is simple. She plays a '70 Guild Artist

Award carved archtop, although she sometimes switches to a semihollow

Epiphone Dot in situations where feedback is an issue. Her amp of

choice is a Fender Deluxe 85 1x12 combo, and her effects include a Line

6 DL4 Delay Modeler, a Pro Co Rat distortion, and a volume pedal.

"I gravitated towards the hollowbody sound, and my Guild has an

acoustic quality no matter what amp it's plugged into," she explains.

In the studio, Halvorson prefers Fender tube amps—although she also

mikes the guitar itself to capture the acoustic sound. She strings the

Guild with Elixer .012s and the Epiphone with Elixer .011s, both with

wound Gs. Her action is set high on both guitars.

Halvorson is currently concentrating on composing for her trio.

While the group uses acoustic bass and clearly lies within the "jazz"

camp, it sounds like no other. A recent gig at Brooklyn's comfortably

intimate Barbes club treated the audience to dissonant arpeggios

melding into pounding odd-meter repetitive grooves, spidery textures

becoming cracked melodies, and jazzy vamps fragmenting into vicious

free-form interactions, with Halvorson wrenching blistering lines and

rude sounds from her guitar.

Despite her many accomplishments, however, Halvorson remains dedicated to continuing her musical development.

"These days I'm really focused on ear training," she says. "I

usually practice playing standards in all keys in one position, trying

to hear the intervals, not patterns. I want to get to the point where I

can hear

anything

and be able to play it."

[Larry Kart]

Hey, I know Halvorson from a Taylor Ho Bynum album I can't get at right now because the basement's all f----- up. She's really good.

[jlhoots]

I don't care about Ratliff , but at least he wrote about Mary Halvorson.

I have that Taylor Ho Bynum Cd too. I like it.

[7/4]

Mary Halvorson & Jessica Pavone at MySpace.

[clifford_thornton]

Mary Halvorson & Jessica Pavone at MySpace.

Great sounding stuff. Thanks.

[Alexander Hawkins]

The recent Braxton trio from Victoriaville last year with Halvorsen and Bynum is brilliant IMHO. Also with the opportunity to hear Braxton at length with electronics!

[jimi089]

Saw her with Taylor Ho Bynum here in Chicago last year and she was wonderful and possesses a unique voice on the guitar. I'm not often impressed by new guitarists but I definitely was with her.

[Kalo]

Just pulled out the Bynum album and damned if she isn't one of the highlights of the thing. I'll definitely keep an ear out for her from now on.

[Alexander Hawkins]

Just pulled out the Bynum album and damned if she isn't one of the highlights of the thing. I'll definitely keep an ear out for her from now on.

Yes - and I think the two guitars are brilliant foils for each other. Mary was also a highlight (on of many) of the Braxton quintet in London a few years back - the one that's now out as Quintet (London) 2004, IIRC.

[jimi089]

Just pulled out the Bynum album and damned if she isn't one of the highlights of the thing. I'll definitely keep an ear out for her from now on.

Yes - and I think the two guitars are brilliant foils for each other.

Agreed on both counts.

[alocispepraluger102]

i've met mary.

she is as fine a person as she is musician.

[AllenLowe]

have emailed her - and can confirm - very nice person -

[7/4]

A Versatile Guitarist ‘Sort of Based in Jazz’

By NATE CHINEN

Published: November 4, 2008

Mary Halvorson was the picture of calm at the Greenwich Village club Le Poisson Rouge on a recent evening, slouched intently over her big hollow-body guitar. But the music she was making, with the violist Jessica Pavone, buzzed and bristled. It was a typical night on the bandstand for Ms. Halvorson: intricate song forms met with startling jolts of insight that felt as rooted in experimental rock, folk and chamber music as in any subspecies of jazz.

Ms. Halvorson, 28, has built a name as a guitarist in new-music circles, largely through an association with the celebrated multireedist and composer Anthony Braxton. And she has proved herself a judicious composer, in the duo with Ms. Pavone and in People, a willfully eccentric rock band.

more

[sheldonm]

I've seen/heard/photographed her at Vision Fest a couple times....I like her!

m

[Guest Bill Barton]

After living with the trio's recording Dragon's Head on Firehouse 12 for awhile I must say that it sounds better and better each time I re-listen. If I had to pick just one "record of the year" it's a strong candidate (and in fact it was included on the 2008 Top Ten list I submitted to CODA.)

Here's hoping she makes it out to the West Coast soon!

[MomsMobley]

ribot, grimes, taylor, halvorson

Edited April 1, 2014 by MomsMobley