[ October the 3rd, 2025 release via Intakt Records, Sylvie Courvoisier & Wadada Leo Smith – Angel Falls ]

Angel Falls, out October 3, 2025 via Intakt Records, thrives on the pair’s exceptional chemistry, fearless improvisational flights and shared sense of form

“Whenever I’ve played onstage with Sylvie Courvoisier… it’s always been a journey that has been mutual and creative. She’s got courage, and you can see it when she’s at the piano: When she is inspired to go toward something, she doesn’t just go near it, she advances as if she’s going there to save creation.” – Wadada Leo Smith, New York Times

Angel Falls, the scintillating duo between Sylvie Courvoisier and Wadada Leo Smith, hasn’t materialised out of thin air. A product of mutual admiration, it arrives after a series of encounters in larger ensembles. The pianist and trumpeter first played together in 2017 at a concert organised by John Zorn.

Smith was clearly impressed because, as Courvoisier recalls, “right after the concert he asked for my number and a couple of months later, we did a trio recording with Marcus Gilmore in New Haven.” While that date remains unissued, there have been regular collaborations since, including further trios, a Smith ensemble with two pianos, and, of course, Courvoisier’s Chimaera, also on Intakt, which features the trumpeter alongside fellow trumpeter Nate Wooley.

Duets with piano form an enduring strand of Smith’s work. Given his love of the format – he’s recorded with pianists as diverse as Vijay Iyer, John Tilbury, Angelica Sanchez, and Amina Claudine Myers – it was inevitable that he would suggest a record with Courvoisier. But it was the pianist who suggested that they avoid charts. As a result the eight tracks of Angel Falls possess a stunning immediacy and nonetheless, a sense of sonic architecture discovered anew.

Each is a vivid, restless exchange of tone and texture, shapeshifting co-creations alternately volatile and melodic, spacious and elliptical, vulnerable and assertive. Without fail, Smith and Courvoisier complement one another, with no recourse to obvious gambits. There’s no comping, no showboating, only a constant sense of ongoing calibration, oblique elements somehow poised in the perfect balance.

Such artistry draws on lifetimes of musical experience. And on this album the inspiration comes through remarkably unmediated. As Courvoisier reveals: “We just played right through exactly the order of the CD, and exactly the amount of music on the CD, with no edits. We probably did that in two hours.” It was recorded and mixed the same day. They started at noon and by 5pm it was finished.

The organic quality of the music is reflected in the titles, assigned during a subsequent joint listen to the playback, many of which reference the elemental forces of the nature. Of the title piece, named after the world’s highest continuous waterfall in Venezuela, Courvoisier says: “And I also like the image of an angel falling down.”

Smith exhibits a magnificently poetic musical presence. Elegant, and rarely hurried, he performs with controlled fire, whether in majestic annunciatory fanfares or through tones nuanced with subtle articulation and attack, further expanded by his astute wielding of mutes. His stepfather was a Delta bluesman, and that spirit has never been far away from his playing even within more exploratory spheres. But Smith’s concern for form unites such disparate sources until they become a signature sound.

One characteristic Courvoisier shares with the trumpeter is that she has become absolutely one of a kind. It’s hard to think of anyone else bringing the same thrilling blend of contemporary classical rigor, improv unpredictability and free jazz verve to the table. A striking aspect of the program stems from the huge timbral variety she extracts from under the bonnet of her piano. But unlike many, Courvoisier operates totally in the moment. “If I hear a sound in my head, which needs to be not tempered or I want something more pecky, I will do an instant preparation.” Such spontaneity has been a feature of her practice ever since childhood, when she experimented on the piano when her parents were out of the house. “I put the radio on and I imitated all the sounds. I was trying every object I could find in the house.” She brings that same childlike sense of wonder to this session. “With Wadada I feel like we are creating in the moment and I feel something very joyful. We’re like kids discovering things.”