Ellery Eskelin & Sylvie Courvoisier

Ellery Eskelin, tenor saxophone
Sylvie Courvoisier, piano

ELLERY ESKELIN and SYLVIE COURVOISIER have been performing improvised concerts together in the United States and Europe since 2003. Both musicians have led numerous projects over the years and are also known for their participation with many of the most respected musicians on the improvised music scene today. Mr. Eskelin and Ms. Courvoisier are virtuosos on their respective instruments and are dedicated to creating an improvised musical language that, while complex, exhibits a strong sense of lyricism and form. The program for this evening’s concert will be like their previous concerts … entirely spontaneous invention from the first until the last note.

ELLERY ESKELIN was born in 1959 and raised in Baltimore,Maryland where his mother, “Bobbie Lee,” played Hammond B3 organ with her own groups during the early sixties. Eskelin has now been a resident of New York for more than twenty years. During that time, he has become recognized as “a major player in today’s creative music” (Downbeat) through his work as a leader and as a side-person on the international music scene. Eskelin is perhaps best known for his trio with Andrea Parkins and Jim Black, which has been touring and recording steadily since 1994 and has been called “… one of the finest units in progressive jazz” by Downbeat magazine.

Mr. Eskelin has released over twenty recordings as a leader and has been named in Best of the Year critics’ polls by the New York Times, Village Voice, and major jazz magazines in the United States and abroad. His projects have employed the talents of such musicians as Marc Ribot, Kenny Wolleson, Erik Friedlander,Mark Dresser,Matt Moran, Mat Maneri, Joe Daley,Melvin Gibbs, Arto Tuncboyacian, Phil Haynes, Drew Gress, Andrea Parkins, and Jim Black. His latest release is entitled TEN and is available on the hatOLOGY record label. Ellery Eskelin has also released a DVD tour diary titled “On the Road with ...” documenting a recent European tour.

For more information, please go online to: http://home.earthlink.net/~eskelin/.

SYLVIE COURVOISIER, ECM recording artist, was born in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1968 and started to play piano at age of six, initiated by her father, an amateur jazz pianist. She grew up learning jazz at the Jazz Conservatory of Montreux, and classical music at the Conservatoire de Lausanne.

Since her first recorded release in 1994, Sylvie has led appearances on concert stages all over Europe as well as the United States and Canada. She has released five recordings as leader and eight more as co-leader. As a composer, she has been commissioned to write pieces for concerts, radio, dance, and theater. As a pianist and improviser, she plays and records with artists including Mark Feldman, John Zorn, Tony Oxley, Yusef Lateef, Butch Morris, Tim Berne, Herb Robertson, Joëlle Léandre, Dave Douglas, Susie Ibarra, Ellery Eskelin, Ikue Mori, Fred Frith,Michel Godard,Mark Nauseef, and Jacques Demierre.

In 1998, Ms. Courvoisier moved to Brooklyn, New York. Since that time she has toured widely with her husband, the violinist Mark Feldman, as well as with the collective group Mephista, John Zorn’s Cobra, as a soloist, and with her trio Abaton. Her latest release, Abaton, is available on ECM Records.

For more information, go online to: http://www.sylviecourvoisier.com/. 8:30 p.m.,March 1, 2006 Bucknell Hall – Free Selections will be announced. There will be an intermission.