Halvorson

The late great improviser/composer Kenny Wheeler once reported to the Guardian that what he liked doing best was “writing sad tunes, and then letting wonderful musicians destroy them”. The New York guitarist and new-music original Mary Halvorson (who, like Wheeler, was once a receptive disciple in the challenging bands of veteran boundary-buster Anthony Braxton) has also made a home in the turbulently dreamlike spaces where composition and the whims of improv meet. Lessons learned as a live improviser and off-stage as an…

New York-based guitarist and composer Mary Halvorson doesn’t have time to hang about. When we speak she’s about to run out the door for a Saturday evening gig at John Zorn’s venue the Stone – and when that’s done she has to be up at 5am for a flight to Chicago for another show. The improvising jazz musician wouldn’t have it any other way. “Going through that period of Covid, I’m feeling very grateful that we are able to play music again and do shows,” she says from her home in Brooklyn. “It’s so gruelling, the travel that…

The tenaciously inventive Massachusetts-born guitarist Mary Halvorson swapped classical violin for an electric guitar when she heard Jimi Hendrix at 11, and a biology degree for a life in music when she met avant-jazz composing, sax-improvising legend Anthony Braxton at a college jazz workshop. Halvorson has since forged a 20-year career embracing multiple DownBeat magazine best guitar awards, dozens of albums as a guest or leader, a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” and much else.Halvorson’s current double release,…