Sylvie Courvoisier and Nataniel Edelman

Foto: Veronique Hoegger

Pianist-composer Sylvie Courvoisier, a Brooklyn-based native of Switzerland and winner of the Swiss Grand Prix and The American Academy of Arts and Letters Music Award in 2025, has earned renown for balancing two distinct worlds: the deep, richly detailed chamber music of her European roots and the grooving, hook-laden sounds of the avant-jazz scene in New York City, her home for more than two decades. Few artists feel truly at ease in both concert halls and jazz clubs, playing improvised or composed music. But Courvoisier — “a pianist of equal parts audacity and poise,” according to The New York Times — is as compelling when performing Stravinsky’s epochal Rite of Spring in league with new-music pianist Cory Smythe as she is when improvising with her own acclaimed jazz trio, or in solo. In music as in life, Courvoisier crosses borders with a creative spirit and a free mind; her music-making is as playful as it is intense, as steeped in tradition as it is questing and intrepid. Her new quartet Amalthea will tour Europe in spring 2026, supporting the group’s debut album on Pyroclastic Records. A vital part of her output remains the long-standing trio with Gress and Wollesen, praised by DownBeat as “one of the most exciting piano trios at work today.” Their fourth album, Éclats – Live in Europe, will be released in March 2026 on Intakt. Courvoisier also records and performs in celebrated duos with Mary Halvorson — their 2025 album Bone Bells was voted #1 Album of the Year in Jazzwise — and with Wadada Leo Smith, with whom she released Angel Falls in 2025. She currently teaches at The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York City and has taught masterclasses across Europe for more than twenty years.

Foto: Denise Bande

Nataniel Edelman (*1991) is a pianist, composer, and improviser from Buenos Aires, Argentina, currently based in Bern, Switzerland. He is a highly active musician on both the Argentine and European scenes. He has recorded several albums as a bandleader and has been involved in numerous projects as a sideman as well as in collaborative ventures. Among his projects is a trio with double bassist Michael Formanek and alto saxophonist Michaël Attias. Together, they recorded Un Ruido de Agua for Clean Feed Records in 2023 and En Vivo en Lisboa for Robalo Music in 2024, with a new album planned for 2027. He also has a duo project with the virtuoso trumpeter Valentín Garvie, with whom he released the album Tarde Mañana on Discos ICM in 2026. He is currently completing his Master’s degree in Composition at the Bern Academy of the Arts (HKB).